Sperm Whale - Tumblr Posts

Didn't expect this but whales are rlly cool

What deep sea creature are you?

don’t you just hate it when the food fights back? :[

It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.

Herman Melville “Moby Dick”

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Footnote: How I 'doin? Feel like seeing more rambles? This is my new blog! Due to pesky technical issues with the old one, both the CFF and the MMM lil write up series have been moved to continue here!

Creacher Feature Friday 9: Cachalots Are Pretty Badass

Okay, I needed something a bit easier to get back into the swing of this stick. Something with a funny name. Something maybe a little relevant to the huge Moby Dick kick I've been getting back on lately. Here's just the thing,

Now I'd hope you already know what the common cachalot of all things was. They're big, they're blocky looking, they dive real deep, and they're also known as sperm whales to most people these days. Be very assured there's a lot more to these marine hulks than meets the eye, and it's pretty hardcore stuff to say the least.

Bet you at least wondered what the colloquial name was all about, to make middle schoolers chuckle at the very mention of such a creature? As much as it does indeed have that effect, it's actually because the animals were long-hunted over the seas precisely for their enormous amounts of sperm…-aceti, that is! Say it again, spermaceti! This was the stuff 17th century dudes were so laser focused on these specific whales over in the first place. I wish I could tell you to get your mind out of the gutter on the word, but spermaceti does basically translate from its latin origins to 'Whale jizz'. No, that's not what it really is, but that's what the first bozos who discovered it thought it seemed like, so you can go and blame them for this. Not sure if i prefer this timeline or the one where we call them "Spunk Whales" instead.

But about this not-jizz itself, inside the living leviathan, it exists as a waxy substance, housed in no more fitting place than the whale's own Spermaceti organ. If you've ever wondered what the inside of those big fat heads of theirs was so stuffed with, well, they're literally big fat heads after all.

So much of a Sperm whale's noggin is dedicated to just these two big sections. The Melon, or simply "junk" (cause whalers tended to regard it as the more useless bits) is a dedicated section of fatty mass that all toothed whales have. The raw spermaceti on the other hand is more of a liquidy grease, and this level of evolutionary commitment to the concentration of it in such a way as above is something special about these fellas. While it does look evidently pretty damn important in some way, experts still debate a little on exactly how it is to the whales. The most likely answer so far is that it plays a role in the creatures' calls and sonar interpretations, sensible with how key to their hunting and communication sound is.  Because of many complicated adaptations to their sonar, their echolocation isn’t just able to sense where their prey is, but also the direction it’s moving toward.

Whalers meanwhile were nuts for the stuff, because after processing, it made for a cornerstone driver of the entire whaling economy age: fueling superior lamps and candles and becoming incorporated into cosmetics, ointments, industrial lubricants, all kinds of uses.

And a bonus whaling fact! Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was actually inspired by real historical events, the white whale itself having been a direct reference to the 100% legit case of “Mocha Dick”, an albino, 70 foot long, and particularly aggressive sperm whale bull that garnered a reputation for his pale hide and propensity to evade/attack several whaling ships.

Even more overtly is how that novel ripped the events of the sinking of the Essex, a 1800s whale ship that straight up sank after a sperm whale, which mind you, the crew were not even actively hunting, rammed their vessel completely unprovoked. This kind of thing was not that unheard of even only a few generations ago. There’s a dozen of things to be said of how much media survived from not even 3 full centuries ago we have to look back on where Sperm whales are not just prized hunts or resources, but feared so greatly by humans that they have been compared to the literal biblical Leviathan. It’s fascinating how we hyped these animals up to mythological, even religious proportion. The average deckhand on a whaling ship, to his perception, was surviving and participating through a real-life Monster Hunter game.  

But,, that’s not quite the feeling around them today, is it?  Noooo, today everyone knows these creatures as some of the gentlest of giants, and I’m not even saying they’re wrong.  Modern cachalots are amazingly docile and chill around humans today, at most usually choosing to just leave the area when boats pull up and they’re not happy.

So, something changed?

Yeah, a lot did, especially the part where we usurped even orca whales as their main natural predator. In a ton of ways, cachalots are virtually the elephants of the sea. They travel in matrilineal herds, their males are called bulls, they're pretty clever cookies, and wouldn't you know it... they sure don't forget easy. They didn't just catch on to what humans were up to when we were harpooning their buddies, but researcher logs dating back from the 19th century recorded that whales were teaching each other how to ram and escape whalers! Not only had the beasties figured out to communicate with their pods and coordinate defensive retaliations against the harpooners, but they even took advantage of the fact that the wooden ships were entirely sail-propelled, so the pods would flee upwind from them!

The ONLY reason that sperm whales are not so aggro'd toward and beefing with humans anymore is purely because they don't feel like they have to anymore. But even if what you're hearing from me is that they're mostly peaceful, that doesn't mean I'm saying they're mostly harmless.

Though mere flesh and bone they may be, cachalots are still near-Lovecraftian levels of powerful alongside a speck of flotsam like you. For one, free-swimming near, especially behind any large enough cetacean is a lot like being a gnat flying around the personal space of a person. You're pretty much at the mercy of whether or not the giant you're following so close to decides it's getting a little annoyed with you. You ever seen how cows can use their tails to swat large flies right out of the air? Except in this case the tail is nearly 20 feet long and powers a 60+ ton mammal like a majestic blimp through the ocean.

Truth be told though that's not even necessary to consider when a grown cachalot could theoretically just shout you to death without a lick of contact. Get me, while under water, these whales are LOUD. Louder than loud, literally the loudest living organism we know of. Remember how I said this species has a ton of unique adaptations devoted to their ability to make noise. A blue whale, the biggest whale, can make "clicks" that register at around  188 decibels of sound. The sperm whale's own can get up to as far as 233 decibels.

*For refence, the human eardrum risks instantly rupturing upon exposure to about 165 db and up. Sounds from 170-200 db can literally just vibrate the utter hell out of your organs, causing potentially life-threatening injuries. Let me reiterate, if you are near a sperm whale, and (unlikely as it may be) that whale decided it wanted to let rip with a full volume click, your own lungs could theoretically just explode and kill you. It could hypothetically be like idling at the receiving end of a sonic cannon.

And You know what else is something everyone knows is badass? Battle scars, and boy oh boy if you would look at the war tapestries these older gents can carry on them.

And there's a lot of stories they can tell. Larger bulls may collect a scratch or two from a scuffle with a rival male, or any adult whale can have an unlucky run in with our fishing gear, but the most notable? Look no further than one of the cachalot's favorite snacks: Enormous, deep sea squids. If you truly are what you eat, than sperm whales are bad. asses. Because for being mostly soft-bodied abyssal spaghetti, large squids put up a hell of a good fight. So, in the process, they often leave a few marks in the whale's skin with their beaks and tentacles in a struggle. "Hol up, they do THAT ^ with their arms? What do they have on those things, teeth? meat hooks???" Yes, in fact.

Giant squid suckers on the left, colossal squid suckers on the right~

And before you get too impressed at what the squids were packing I need to take a second to remind you what kind of tools the spermies are coming at them and their own competition with.

There’s a lot of toothed whales out there in the world, but hats off to these ones, largest of all toothed predators, period. You are survivors, you are majestic wonders, and you. are. badasses.

Don’t forget the part where he’d 110% also somehow turn it into another phallic metaphor.

I think Ishmael Mobydick would really flip out if he learned how sperm whales sleep