A beluga whale has been filmed playing fetch with a rugby ball in extraordinary video shared to Facebook by Alon Kowen. In the clip, a boater hurls the 2019 Rugby World Cup ball several hundred feet and the beluga swims to retrieve it, returning it to the boater's hands. While Kowen reports that the video was shot near the South Pole, Belugas are not found in the southern hemisphere.
Wrote Kowen: “Beluga Whale celebrating the Springboks victory somewhere close to the South Pole ! Spot the Cape Town build Gemini Craft and the South African accents.”
Beluga whales are known for being extremely intelligent and sociable mammals. Fishermen near the fishing village of Inga in Norway earlier this year filmed an unusually friendly beluga whale wearing a harness that was thought to be part of a marine mammal training program by the Russian navy.
