Nonreproductive sexual behavior in baleen whales: Sexual harassment by an adult male on a calf in southern right whales (eubalaena australis)

Abstract

We describe a sexual harassment by an adult male southern right whale to a conspecific calf while on the calving and mating grounds near PV. Sexual harassment is defined in this paper as the behavior of an adult male pursuing a calf with apparent intention to copulate. Observations were made opportunistically from the whale-watching motor vessel. The southern right whale group included a mother calf pair and a solitary individual second adult. The second adult seemed to be chasing the calf which was swimming rapidly on its left side at 5 m average distance from the second adult / pursuing whale. while the calf was positioned above the second adult, this second adult introduced his penis into the calf?s genital slit (see supplementary online underwater video S1).Copulation attempts between an adult male baleen whale and a calf has not been previously reported in the literature. The observations described here indicate that nonreproductive copulation attempts between a southern right whale adult male and a conspecific calf occurred near PV in the calving and mating grounds.