The waters at Shedd Aquarium’s two beluga whale pools will be swirling with more activity than usual now that Naluark, the aquarium’s vagabond beluga male, is back home just in time for the mating season.
With the two surviving calves born at Shedd now nearly adult size, aquarium officials decided it was time to resume its breeding efforts, hoping Naluark might put their three adult females in the family way again.
The canoodling already has begun. And because belugas are not shy about conducting their romances in front of aquarium visitors, aquarium staffers, who spend a lot of time around the whale pools explaining the animals and their behaviors, are being confronted with some awkward questions from curious children.
“It is very obvious when a male beluga whale is aroused,” said Ken Ramirez, Shedd vice president and marine mammal chief.
Awkward moments or not, Naluark’s return reaffirms Shedd’s determination to become a captive beluga breeding center.
Naluark, 17, came home in December from Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, where he had been on stud duty since December 2001. Last month keepers gradually reintroduced him to the adult females, Naya, 14, Puiji, 17, and Mauyak, 21, and the calves, Kayavak, a 5-year-old female, and Qannik, a 4-year-old male.
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“In the wild, males are seldom around the females except when they begin to ovulate, so bringing him back now is a way of mimicking nature,” Ramirez said. “We’re already seeing a lot of mating activity.”
While it isn’t exactly a continuous performance, from now until June, when the mating season ends, Naluark will be called several times a week by the three females for conjugal companionship.
“The female is receptive; she presents herself to Naluark and stimulates him by rubbing up against him. At this time of year, you see a lot of rubbing of bodies together, but actual copulation is over in a few seconds.”
The spectacle can stop visitors in their tracks, however, if they happen to be poolside as it happens.
“We don’t know what parents might want us to tell a child,” Ramirez said of children asking staffers what is going on.
“We simply say `They’re involved in mating activity.’ If their parents jump in and hurry the kids off to see the penguins, fine. If they bring the kids closer to hear more, we will explain more.”
Shedd was determined to make the Oceanarium a major captive beluga breeding center when it opened in 1991.
It has had some major successes, but there have been some heart-wrenching failures and losses along the way, too.
With only 35 belugas in North American zoos and aquariums, so little is known about their behaviors, life cycles and physiology that Shedd has had to learn as it goes along.
Over the years, three adult whales at Shedd have died of various maladies, and three of the five births at the aquarium were unsuccessful.
All the institutions in the U.S. and Canada that keep belugas have banded together to manage all the animals as a single population. They share husbandry information and send males back and forth to breed with females in various institutions.
“We’re learning so much,” Ramirez said. “You generate a lot of new information each year and you put that information together with work being done at other facilities, and slowly you begin to get a clearer picture of what is a successful breeding program.”
After bringing Naluark back from breeding duties at Mystic, the Shedd staff was curious about how much he would remember about the Oceanarium facilities, Puiji, Mauyak and Naya, and the two calves, who were tiny when he last was here.
“Naluark adapted so quickly, nothing seemed to surprise him,” Ramirez said. “All the signs to me were that he recognized the place and the other whales, but we were cautious watched and waited before we let them swim with him in the same pool.
“The two youngsters were the most startled of the animals when he suddenly reappeared.”
Qannik and Kavayak, now both 9 1/2 feet long and nearing 1,000 pounds, behaved badly but naturally.
When one beluga is upset with another beluga, it will show its feelings with a behavior called “jaw popping”–noisily opening and closing its mouth, thought to display a sense of threat.
With an underwater fence separating them from Naluark, Ramirez said, “Qannik and Kayavak did a lot of jaw popping at him when they first saw him.”
That soon stopped when they got used to him, and now the keepers are hoping the two youngsters are learning the mysteries of beluga love by watching their elders carry on.
“Youngsters learn by watching the grown-ups and then copying that behavior as they play,” he said. “They learn survival skills that way and they learn sexual skills the same way.
“Qannik didn’t show much sexual behavior until Naluark came back, but he has since increased his sexual play a great deal, rubbing up against the other animals and everything else in the pool.”
Beluga experts still are trying to determine the courting behaviors that males and females use before mating and what those behaviors might mean, so the mating games at Shedd are being watched closely and recorded.
It won’t be until at least September before Shedd will know whether any of the females is pregnant. However it turns out, this mating season will generate a lot of valuable data on the belugas, Ramirez said.
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“It will be interesting if there are no pregnancies resulting from this mating season,” he said. “We see sexual activity, so we’ll know the failure to conceive can’t be ascribed to lack of trying. Then we’ll have explore the factors that might have stopped conception. Every piece of new information fills in the puzzle.
“We’re establishing a group of really experienced animals. All adult females have given birth at least once, all of them have witnessed births and seen mother-calf bonding activity. We think the future is bright.”