Ode to the Sperm Whale

Illustration of a whale fluke by Max Bennett

When talking about environmental issues, there is an increasing awareness of and push toward a more holistic understanding of ecology. This is a good thing. Environmental preservation is not just about the cute pandas and charismatic lions; they depend upon a healthy, stable ecosystem to persist in the wild. We might as well be flying blind in our efforts to conserve their habitats if we lack an understanding of how the plants, microbes, fungi, and other such organisms contribute to the picture too.

Nonetheless, with this caveat out of the way, I do believe there is a time and a place to appreciate how, for lack of a better term, cool certain animals are. We can build within ourselves a sense of awe for some of the weird and wonderful offerings of evolution. To this end, I shall make the case for why the sperm whale is my favorite animal, in the hopes that you, dear reader, come away with a newfound sense of appreciation for these giants, as well as a bunch of cool whale facts with which you can impress your friends.

Before we begin, perhaps it would be prudent to clarify just what a sperm whale is, for the unacquainted; the common name is a bit misleading. Sperm whales are the largest toothed whales on the planet and swim in oceans around the world. They bear an iconic block-shaped head, which is full of an oily substance called spermaceti. Early whalers likened this resonant fluid, which is believed to enhance the whale’s echolocation, to semen, and thus this majestic marine predator was christened the sperm whale.

A sperm whale mother and calf. Photo via Wikimedia.

Size comparison of sperm whales between various ages and sexes. The ‘exceptionally large’ individuals come from old whaling records, and it is unlikely that many such whales exist today. Photo via Wikimedia.

Despite the name, sperm whales bear many traits and behaviors which are distinctly un-spermlike, most notably their size. As seen in the chart below, these animals can get enormous, but they exhibit noticeable discrepancies between the sexes. The males can weigh over 50 metric tons, making them the largest predators of individual prey on planet Earth. They are only outmassed by a select few baleen whales, who gorge themselves on hordes of plankton.

But what do sperm whales eat? While still a subject of inquiry, the general consensus is that the animals predate upon various fish and cephalopods of the deep sea, which include the infamous giant squid. Lacking teeth on their upper jaw, the whales are believed to be suction feeders. Their pilgrimages to the depths can take over an hour, from which they may return with numerous battle scars from their quarrels with the squid. It’s a daily ritual for these massive mammals, who eat over a ton of food a day, but one we’ll be hard-pressed to ever witness due to the remote nature of the event.

A dioramic recreation of one of these deepwater hunts, modeled at the New York Museum of Natural History. Photo via Flickr.

A bowl of ambergris, whose price almost certainly exceeds that of my college tuition. Photo via Wikimedia.

The best record we have of these encounters is the collection of swallowed squid beaks that accompany stranded whales to their beachy graves. Said beaks are also rather difficult to digest, and thus some of the animals produce a waxy cushioning material called ambergris in their intestines to accommodate the dicey cargo. If that name sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because ambergris, a rare perfume enhancer, is famous for being one of the most expensive substances known to man. It fetches a price of around $35 a gram, rivaling that of gold itself.

Of course, this all begs the question of how the whales even see their prey at such depth, where not even a shred of sunlight manages to penetrate the water column. The short answer is that they don’t; they hear it. With the power of echolocation and the largest brain in the animal kingdom, the sperm whale can pinpoint and chase down fast-moving squid in total darkness. It is believed that their massive head, taking up a third of the animal’s length, can produce powerful sonic pings. When focused by the spermaceti-filled “nose”, these clicks enable the whales to create surprisingly detailed pictures of their surroundings with nothing but echoes. They can even peer inside the bodies of other animals, including human divers, assessing the health and material composition of their targets as they sound them out. In essence, the sperm whale can use ultrasound.

With these auditory instruments, the whales are also among the loudest animals on Earth, capable of producing clicks up to 230 decibels. For reference, a jet engine is around 140 decibels. When amplified by the denser nature of water, the sonic pings are believed to be capable of shaking a human body to death. Sperm whales can likely hear each other thousands of miles apart.

Anatomical diagram of a sperm whale head. The fatty spermaceti within the organ is theorized to aid in reflecting and focusing sound waves. A pair of phonic clappers, also called “monkey lips”, within the head generates vibrations from passing air. Photo via Wikimedia.

An artistic rendition of the retaliation against the Essex. Before whaling was largely banned in the twentieth century, sperm whales were slaughtered en masse for their spermaceti oil and blubber, among other bodily commodities. This was one of the rare instances of an animal aggressor. Photo via Flickr.

The sperm whale’s massive head is also apparently useful for more, shall we say, direct engagements with objectives. According to the accounts from surviving crew members, the Essex, a nineteenth-century whaling ship from Nantucket, was rammed and sunk by a massive sperm whale bull in a remote region of the Pacific. While the animal’s motives were unclear, some believe it mistook the large vessel for another male encroaching on its territory, and thus struck the ship with its enormous battering ram of a head. The whale rendered the Essex ruptured beyond repair, and the whalers were forced to flee their sinking boat. The dramatic tale was so compelling that a writer by the name of Herman Melville felt inspired to publish his own whaling novel. That book was Moby Dick.

Underscoring every conversation about the ethics of hunting or conserving sperm whales is the very real possibility of their intelligence. It is well-documented that sperm whales form tight-knit family units and form deep bonds with one another. Their acoustic abilities enable them to stay in touch across oceans, and some of their short clicking patterns, called codas, are theorized to function as names for different pod members. Their brains are some of the most sophisticated on Earth and bear many structures associated with higher-level functions. These animals might have mastered language itself millions of years before our ancestors first walked upright, and yet we still know so little about their capacity for communication, reason, and love. 

A pod of sperm whales rest at the surface. Recent research efforts have been made to decode their communications, but much work still remains before we uncover their alien intelligence. Photo via Wikimedia.

I linked a captivating account from journalist and author James Nestor, who describes this notion in more detail. The short video also catalogs experiences from freedivers who have encountered these inquisitive animals.

Whenever I watched nature documentaries as a kid, there was always an impending dread I felt as the end drew closer. The anticipation of the inevitable disquisition on just how screwed these amazing creatures are by human activity. I’ll wager that anyone who’s made it to the end here has heard these recitations many times, and understands that disrupting the climatic balance of the planet, shedding copious amounts of trash into waterways, and bombarding the oceans with industrial noise likely isn’t doing sperm whales any favors.

At the end of the day, it is largely within humanity’s control whether these giants and the healthy ecosystems they rely upon, remain a fixture of our world or not. Nonetheless, they are here now, in all their loud, weird, playful but mildly terrifying, squid-fighting glory, and I think that’s pretty cool.

Long live the sperm whale.