“…and today we’re talking about a deep diving jelly-headed leviathan. But more on that later.”
Deep in the water where the fish hang out lives a massive tanky mammal with a quite impressive shout.
This blockheaded blubber boi is looking for a fight, he uses his ticks and tricks to hunt with little light.
But piercing the eardrums of every nearby fish, allows him to eat up all the squid that he could wish.
He’s big, he’s belligerent and noisy as can be, but it’s just how you live in Life Death and Taxonomy.
Description
- Sperm whales look like monstro from the original animated Pinocchio, not the remake.
- They are long citations with a large head that tapers back to their tail.
- They have long narrow jaws, full of teeth the length of a number 2 pencil.
- Their blowholes are S-shaped.
- They have a thick triangular fluke.
Measure Up
Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at Gmail dot com. We don’t have a new Measure Up intro!
Length
- Sperm whales are the largest toothed whales at 20.7 meters (68 ft) long
- How many sperm whales go into the distance traveled in the People’s Crusade of 1096 from their starting place in Cologne, Germany to their bitter end in the Battle of Civetot.
- Hint: The People’s Crusade started off the First Crusade, which was a response to the Byzantine Empire’s call for aid in the fight against encroaching selgic turks that had taken historically significant sites like Antioch. Pope Urban II saw it as an opportunity to bring Christendom together after the Great Schism, assert control over unruly lords, and maybe even retake Jerusalem. He used bad theology to get people to take up arms. The People’s Crusade was kicked off by Peter the Hermit, a priest who was all fired up about the crusade and got Western Europeans jazzed about going to war. From Cologne to Constantinople, they only ever won (and sometimes lost) skirmishes against their own allies. As soon as they entered enemy controlled territory, they were ambushed and crushed by the Turks. This is what happens when you don’t read your Bible.
- 120,663 whales. The trip was around 1,554 miles (2500 km).
Weight
- 80 tonnes (88 short tons, 176,000 pounds)
- How many female giant squid would a sperm whale have to eat to eat its weight in squid?
- Hint: Females are quite a bit larger than male squid, which are 330 pounds.
- 290 giant squids. Female Giant Squid can be up to 275 kg (606 lb).
Fast Facts
Sperm whales eat all manner of fish and squid. They famously wrestle with the ocean’s biggest squid species and win almost every time.
They eat tons of food a day literally. They can eat up to 3% of their body weight each day.
They get their name from a waxy substance in their head that was once believed to be male germ cells. Today it’s actually thought to be a substance that aids in buoyancy and echolocation.
Pods can contain around 20 individuals and are matriarchal. Young males stick with their moms until it’s time to strike out on their own.
Sperm whale ribs are connected to the spine by flexible cartilage, which allows them to avoid breaking under high pressure.
Sperm whale skulls are asymmetrical, which is useful in echolocation. Sound waves that return to one side will sound different than sound waves that return to the other because they will resonate differently.
They have four chambered stomachs like cows.
Major Fact: Loudest Animal on Earth
There are a few ways to measure sound but decibels are used for the intensity of sound:
- A ticking watch is 20 decibels.
- A typical conversation about anything other than politics is an easy 65 decibels.
- Motorcycles come in at 100 decibels – at this point, sustained sound can permanently damage your hearing.
- A jet taking off is 140the threshold for pain is 130.
- Opening a mint during church is a whopping 160 (JK)
- Monstro’s roars in the original Pinnochio is 180 (also JK)
In 1967, NASA recorded the first stage of the Saturn V rocket and measured it at 204 decibels
The illustrious monstro can squeak out an incredible 230 decibels at max. Enough to turn your eardrums into a mint wrapper at church.
Now, this is kinda cheating since sound travels a lot faster underwater than it does through the air due to the increased density of liquids versus gasses. In the air, it would be about 174 decibels – definitely more than the mint but a bit less than the sneezy boy monstro.
Like many cetaceans, sperm whales use echolocation to find prey and navigate in the crushing black depths of Davy Jones’ Locker.
It makes the clicks by forcing air through a pair of lips called “phonic lips” or “museau de singe” or “monkey lips” located in their noses near the blowhole.
The sound then goes through the actual titular spermaceti organ, and then reflected off the frontal sac and into the melon, which works as a sonic lens if you remember our dolphin episode
Some sound will be reflected back and go through the spermaceti organ again.
All this happens in milliseconds and creates a pulse-like click sound that can destroy eardrums.
The air used in this is recycled so the whale can do this forever, or at least until it surfaces again.
But that doesn’t explain why it has to be louder than a Saturn rocket. It’s mostly for other whales to hear it from long distances.
Scientists used to think they used the sound to stun or kill giant squid, but they tried playing the whale’s clicks to a bunch of them at the right volume and it didn’t do anything.
Ending: So dive down deep, sing your favorite song at the top of your lungs, and try to smash untrustworthy sentient puppets to smithereens like Monstro here in LDT.