Beluga whale returns phone dropped into water by owner

A beluga whale made headlines recently for returning a cell phone to the device’s grateful owner, after it had been dropped into the ocean. 

Reportedly filmed in Norway, the video-gone-viral shows the whale approaching the water’s surface, with an iPhone gripped firmly in its mouth.

Isa Opdahl Larsson, the 21-year-old who originally shared the video to Instagram, captioned it with “when animals are kinder than humans”.

Seems like that’s most of the time, if we’re being honest. They don’t “complisult” each other, or steal the last slice of vegan pizza either. Heck, a number of animals have even saved their humans’ lives — assets (marginally) more important to most of us than our phones.

Anyway, the footage of the little beluga’s cell-phone retrieval has since been viewed nearly 300,000 times on Instagram alone. You can check it out for yourself here, but don’t go yet. There’s more.

It’s suspected the little beluga is the very same animal dubbed the “Russian spy whale” earlier this month. After the beluga was found wearing a harness with markings indicating its country of origin, theories were quick to circulate that the animal might be trained as a war weapon. Sounds intense, right? Well, it is, but it may be a little sensationalist.

Morten Vikebay, a former journalist for Norweigan fishing newspaper Fiskeribladet, has since argued that the whale is, in fact, a children’s therapy animal. He said that he recognized the whale from a feature he wrote about it in 2008.

Well, that sounds better. Let’s stick with that story. Just kidding. The news doesn’t work that way.

Header image: Starz12/Shutterstock.com
Body image: Instagram