THE UNIQUE SPERM WHALES

      Scientists claim that over many millions of years, whales evolved from a kind of land-based, bear-like creatures that slowly adapted to getting food from the oceans, becoming the mammals they are today.  And it seems that, early on, sperm whales diverged from the baleen whales to take advantage of different food sources, other than the baleens' sieving tiny plants and animals from the oceans' surfaces.  Sperm whales evolved different mouth structures and habits than baleen whales, to hunt giant squid, octopi, sharks, rays and larger fish in cold, dark, crushing ocean water over a half mile down.  Sperm whales have 52, cone-shaped teeth on their narrow lower jaws that catch the animals listed above, just like bears and wolves do.  

     Sperm whales are unique.  They are the only whales that adapted to diving so deep to get food, a practice that took eons to perfect.  They are able to stay submerged for up to two hours in their quests for prey animals.  When deep in the ocean their heart slows to conserve oxygen, lungs collapse to avoid the pressure from the water that deep, and the oxygen is directed to muscles and other tissues.  Sperm whales have eyes, but they can't see anything in the ocean depths.  Like bats, they use echolocation to navigate and find their prey.  Each whale constantly utters loud sounds from near its one blowhole.  The sounds go back through a large resonating chamber of waxy material that amplifies them, then they bounce off the skull and out a large, lower chamber of liquid to the outside.  Those two large organs together create the massive bulge in each sperm whale's head that makes up a third of its body length.

     Those sound waves each whale sends out proceed through the dark water, and the ones that hit something bounce back to the whale who picks up those returned vibrations with its acoustic fat pads that serve as ears.  And like bats, the whale can "see" in darkness by forming pictures in its large, intelligent brain from those vibrations.  We people can "see" by feeling things with our finger tips. 

     Though an endangered species, sperm whales are globally distributed.  And they are the largest toothed predator on earth today.  Adult males measure up to 60 feet in length, while mature females grow up to 40 feet.  Mature males weigh 40 to 50 tons, while full-grown females are 14 to 18 tons.  The males' greater sizes illustrate that they compete with each other for mating rights by pushing and fighting each other.  Bigger males get the girls.  

     Both genders are dark gray all over.  Groups of these whales take cat naps in vertical positions.  Young, weaned males form their own groups until they are about 30 years old.  Then, surviving males strike out to find groups of females who they will mate with.  Females and their young form family groups; safety in numbers.  But orcas and larger sharks do prey on some sperm whales.    

     Sperm whales have the largest brains ever.  Their brains weigh 20 pounds and are very much convoluted like human brains, which indicates intelligence in both species.

     Sperm whales are unique.  They are physically adapted to a specific niche where they get their food.  And that uniqueness makes them intriguing, as all life is.                       

     

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