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We know that mammals have fur or hair, are warm blooded, require oxygen to flow into their lungs, and drink their mother’s milk. Humpback whales, of course, are mammals, but it’s pretty dang hard to get footage of a humpback whale calf feeding because… well, because they’re whales. But in August of 2022, scientists from Macuáticos Colombia and Madre Agua Colombia stuck a camera on a baby humpback and captured the second recording ever of a calf feeding.
Shot off the coast of Columbia in the Gulf of Cupica, the footage was acquired by sticking a camera onto the calf with suction cups. When humpbacks reach maturity, they’re enormous. Up to 60-feet long and weighing up to 40 tons, they swim ridiculous distances every year. Between breeding grounds and feeding grounds, they can swim around 5,000 miles over the course of their migrations. Which means that those babies need to get a lot of calories — and humpback whale milk certainly has that. It’s around 40 percent fat, so those calves can really pack on the pounds before they navigate their way to their Antarctic feeding grounds.
Although researchers certainly knew that the calves fed on mother’s milk, they’ve had an exceedingly hard time capturing footage of it.
“Despite decades of efforts by thousands of researchers, hours of work, collaborations, lactation recordings are extremely rare,” said biologist Natalia Botero to Live Science. “From a scientific point of view this is an important step, but also for conservation.”
From a less intelligent point of view, it’s also just super cute.
