The orca, or killer whale, lost for days in the Seine died of starvation, experts say after examining its body, suspecting that the animal had stopped eating because it felt lonely.
"The orca, which was found dead in the river on May 30, died because it stopped eating and had an empty stomach," announced the prefecture of Rouen.
"While it was not possible to say for sure, the isolation may have been the cause of the animal's refusal to eat, a behavior sometimes observed in marine mammals that live and hunt in groups," the experts said.
"The fact that the orca was lost in a river, far from its natural habitat in the ocean, played no role," according to experts.
During the autopsy, scientists also found a bullet in the area of the head tissue.
However, the bullet did not cause permanent injury to the whale, nor did it contribute to its death.
According to experts, the orca was a female over four meters long and weighed 1,100 kilograms.
Her skeleton will be exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.