Maybe it was the excitement and romance of being in a new place and surrounded by new faces. Maybe it was the idea of two lusty hunks competing for her affection. Whatever the reason, Mauyak, a 16-year-old beluga whale who came to the Shedd Aquarium last March to help spice up its breeding program, became pregnant almost immediately.
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It’s not easy to tell when whales are in a family way, however. Jubilant Shedd officials confirmed the pregnancy only earlier this month with ultrasound photos. On Monday they cautiously announced Mauyak’s delicate condition.
If all goes well, after a 14- to 16-month pregnancy Mauyak (pronounced MY-ak) will give birth sometime next summer.
The birth would be the first baby beluga born in the Shedd’s 6-year-old, $41 million Oceanarium. One of the original goals for the huge facility, which is equipped with four whale-size pools, was to create an ideal breeding habitat for captive belugas.
Having already gone through some heartbreaking setbacks in their program, including the deaths of a male and a female beluga in 1992 from reaction to a deworming medicine, Shedd officials are welcoming news of the pregnancy.
Although captive breeding has become fairly routine with some cetacean (whale and dolphin) species, until the last five years, little was known about how to get belugas to successfully breed. The first surviving captive beluga was born in 1991. If Mauyak’s calf survives, which is a 50-50 proposition, it would be the seventh successful birth of a captive beluga baby.
“Our beluga breeding program has taken off very quickly,” said Ken Ramirez, the Oceanarium’s chief trainer.
A couple of years ago, marine mammal experts, acting on newly observed knowledge of beluga mating behaviors, decided to regard all 34 captive belugas in North America as a single breeding group. That allowed them to create ideal breeding pods by switching animals back and forth from eight institutions in the United States and Canada.
The key new knowledge was that pregnancies are more likely to occur when there are two or more males competing for the attention of ovulating female belugas. In the past, most institutions with beluga collections kept only one male and two or more females.
Acting on the multiple male theory, Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo sent Mauyak and a 16-year-old male, Inuk (EE-nook), to the Shedd last March. They joined the aquarium’s resident male, Naluark (na-LOO-ark), and two females, Puiji (poo-EE-jee) and Immiayuk (im-ee-AH-yook), all about 11 years old. A younger female from the Shedd, Naya (NY-ah), went to the Tacoma zoo to join an older female there.
The move was made in the middle of the normal beluga mating season. After a couple of weeks of getting to know each other, the Shedd’s new beluga mix of three females and two males began engaging in frequent sexual encounters. Inuk, the male from Tacoma, at 2,600 pounds easily dominated all others, including 1,600-pound Naluark, the Shedd’s male.
Both males, however, actively mated with all three females until the breeding season ended in late May. “We don’t know which of the males is the likely father,” said Ramirez. “We won’t know until we are able to do blood tests on the calf, something we wouldn’t normally do until it is about 1 year old.”
The elation of having a confirmed pregnancy, now in the human equivalent of the second trimester, is tempered, he said, with the caution that beluga births are filled with peril.
Mauyak, for example, had two full-term pregnancies at the Tacoma zoo, but neither baby survived the extremely critical first day after birth. One died within minutes because of a malfunctioning respiratory system, the other drowned within minutes when it got caught between two adults underwater and couldn’t surface in time to breathe.
The fact that Mauyak has already given birth two times might favor a successful birth this time, however. Most female whales do not have successful first-time births, but the odds of survival begin to increase with succeeding births. “But we can’t count on that,” Ramirez said. “There are so many critical times in a pregnancy and in a baby beluga’s first year of life that we’ll be on the edge of our seats with this one.”
Although almost all newborn baby land mammals (with the exception of humans) shakily rise to their feet within minutes of birth as a measure of survival, baby whales swim weakly and erratically in their first few hours of life.
Once bonded, a baby whale should find the mother’s mammaries and begin feeding. If it doesn’t, that would spell disaster.
“If the baby is healthy after 10 days, you can give a small sigh of relief,” Ramirez said.
The two male belugas most definitely will not be in the same pool while Mauyak gives birth. Males have nothing to do with rearing babies and juveniles. In fact, right after birth, male belugas pose a serious threat to the babies, said Lou Garibaldi, director of the New York Aquarium for Wildlife Conservation.
“You don’t want the pup attacked by the male. To an adult male, a pup is an intruder. There have been instances when the pups have been bitten and drowned by males.”
The theory that multiple males are the key to successful beluga mating began at Garibaldi’s institution early in this decade. In 1990, his aquarium decided to add a second male to its group, unaware of the potential consequences. Within a year, one of the aquarium’s females had the first successful captive beluga birth, and a second birth soon followed.
About the same time, while repairs were made at its facilities, Sea World placed all eight of its belugas together at its Texas aquarium, resulting in three births.
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In Tacoma, Inuk and Mauyak had been mating for years without any pregnancies. In the early 1990s, however, Mauyuk became pregnant twice when keepers placed a much smaller animal, a male harbor porpoise, in their habitat.