Why You'd Never Want To Meet A Sperm Whale — Transcript

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1. 0:00Picture this. You're floating in the
2. 0:02open ocean and you've done your
3. 0:04homework. Sharks are rare out here.
4. 0:07Orcas tend to leave divers alone.
5. 0:09Nothing in the sea is actually looking
6. 0:11for you. That's the rule.
7. 0:14Then you feel it. Not see it, feel it. A
8. 0:18deep knocking in your chest like someone
9. 0:21tapping on your ribs from the inside.
10. 0:23That's a sperm whale and it already
11. 0:26knows exactly where you are.
12. 0:29When most people think of a dangerous
13. 0:31whale, they think of orcas, the ones
14. 0:33with killer right there in the name. Or
15. 0:36they picture a humpback breaching and
16. 0:37landing on a boat. And yes, orcas are
17. 0:40apex predators and big whales have
18. 0:43flipped boats by accident. But the sperm
19. 0:45whale is in a different category. It's
20. 0:48the biggest predator with teeth that has
21. 0:50ever lived. It hunts in places no other
22. 0:53mammal can reach and it once sank a ship
23. 0:57on purpose.
24. 0:58So let's talk about why you'd never want
25. 1:00to be in the water with one.
26. 1:02First, the size because it's hard to
27. 1:05picture.
28. 1:06A big male sperm whale can reach around
29. 1:0816 m long and weigh roughly 40 tons.
30. 1:12That's about the length of a city bus
31. 1:14and the weight of six or seven
32. 1:15elephants. And it looks like this.
33. 1:19That giant square block at the front
34. 1:21isn't a forehead. It's a head that takes
35. 1:24up around a third of the whole animal.
36. 1:26Down at the bottom of it, there's a long
37. 1:28narrow jaw that looks almost too small
38. 1:31for the rest of the body.
39. 1:33But just look at those teeth. They only
40. 1:35grow on the bottom jaw and each one can
41. 1:38be about as long as your hand and weigh
42. 1:40around a kilogram.
43. 1:42A humpback filters tiny krill through a
44. 1:44mouth full of bristles. A sperm whale
45. 1:47doesn't filter anything. It grabs.
46. 1:50Which raises the obvious question, what
47. 1:53does something this big actually eat?
48. 1:56Squid. And not small ones. Sperm whales
49. 1:59hunt in the deep, dark water where giant
50. 2:02squid and colossal squid live. And if
51. 2:04you've been watching Depth Theory for a
52. 2:06while, you already know what those squid
53. 2:08are carrying. Hooks, suckers lined with
54. 2:11teeth, beaks that can slice through
55. 2:14flesh.
56. 2:15The sperm whale goes down there anyway,
57. 2:17on purpose, every single day. And it
58. 2:20comes back up with proof.
59. 2:23Sperm whales are often covered in round
60. 2:25scars and long scratches from squid
61. 2:27fighting back. Their stomachs can hold
62. 2:30thousands of squid beaks because beaks
63. 2:32don't digest.
64. 2:34A sperm whale basically keeps a receipt
65. 2:36for every meal it's ever had. Most of us
66. 2:39can't even find one receipt when we need
67. 2:41it.
68. 2:42To get there, it does something no other
69. 2:44mammal can really match. A sperm whale
70. 2:46can dive more than 2 km down and hold
71. 2:49its breath for over an hour. You'd
72. 2:51struggle to hold yours for 1 minute in a
73. 2:54swimming pool. And the deeper it goes,
74. 2:56the darker it gets until there's no
75. 2:58light at all. So, how does it find
76. 3:01anything down there? With sound. That
77. 3:03huge head is basically a biological
78. 3:06speaker. Inside it sits a massive organ
79. 3:09filled with a waxy oil called
80. 3:11spermaceti. And the whale uses it to
81. 3:13focus clicks into a beam, like a
82. 3:15flashlight made of sound. Those clicks
83. 3:18bounce off squid, fish, rocks, and you,
84. 3:21and come back as a picture of everything
85. 3:23around it. And these aren't gentle
86. 3:25clicks. The sperm whale is officially
87. 3:28the loudest animal on Earth. Its clicks
88. 3:31have been measured at around 236
89. 3:33decibels underwater. Some of that sound
90. 3:36can carry for tens of kilometers. Divers
91. 3:39who've been close to sperm whales
92. 3:40describe feeling the clicks hitting
93. 3:42their bodies, rattling straight through
94. 3:45their chest. Remember that knocking from
95. 3:47the start? That was you being scanned.
96. 3:50Back in the '80s, some scientists even
97. 3:52suggested sperm whales might be able to
98. 3:54stun prey with a blast of sound. That
99. 3:57idea has never been proven. But
100. 3:59honestly, the fact that scientists had
101. 4:00to sit down and seriously consider it
102. 4:03says a lot about how loud these things
103. 4:05are. But here's the part that makes the
104. 4:07sperm whale genuinely unsettling. It's
105. 4:10not just big and loud, it's smart. It
106. 4:13has the largest brain of any animal that
107. 4:15has ever lived, around 8 kg. That's
108. 4:18heavier than a bowling ball, and it uses
109. 4:21that brain to talk. Sperm whales live in
110. 4:24close family groups and communicate with
111. 4:26patterns of clicks called codas. In
112. 4:282024, researchers studying families off
113. 4:31the coast of Dominica analyzed nearly
114. 4:339,000 of these codas and found that the
115. 4:36whales combine rhythm, tempo, and tiny
116. 4:39timing changes in a way that works a bit
117. 4:41like an alphabet. Different groups even
118. 4:43have their own dialects. So, picture it
119. 4:46again. You're in the water and a 40-ton
120. 4:49animal is scanning you with sound and
121. 4:51then clicking something to its family
122. 4:53about what it found. I'd really like to
123. 4:55know what it said. Actually, no, I
124. 4:58probably wouldn't. But all of this
125. 5:00raises an obvious question. Has a sperm
126. 5:02whale ever actually turned that size and
127. 5:04intelligence against people? Yes, once,
128. 5:08very famously. In November 1820, a
129. 5:11whaling ship called the Essex was
130. 5:13hunting sperm whales in the Pacific
131. 5:14Ocean when a huge male turned around and
132. 5:17rammed it. Then it came back and rammed
133. 5:20it again. The ship sank and the crew
134. 5:23ended up drifting across the ocean in
135. 5:24small boats for months. Their story
136. 5:27became the inspiration for Moby Dick.
137. 5:30And the Essex wasn't the only one. In
138. 5:321851, the same year Moby Dick was
139. 5:35published, another whaling ship called
140. 5:37the Anne Alexander was also rammed and
141. 5:40sunk by a sperm whale.
142. 5:42Some scientists have even argued that
143. 5:43the giant head might work partly like a
144. 5:46battering ram, something males could use
145. 5:48when fighting each other. Ships just
146. 5:50happened to be the wrong shape to argue
147. 5:52back.
148. 5:53To be fair to the whale, the crew had
149. 5:55come out there to kill it and its
150. 5:57family. So, that wasn't really an
151. 5:59attack, it was a complaint. I know the
152. 6:02question we're all thinking. If you were
153. 6:05in the water and a sperm whale came
154. 6:06straight at you, what would you actually
155. 6:09do?
156. 6:10Well, let's break it down. You could
157. 6:12swim away, but a sperm whale cruises
158. 6:14comfortably at a few kilometers an hour
159. 6:17and can sprint much faster. And it's
160. 6:19been tracking you with sound since
161. 6:21before you even saw it. That's like
162. 6:23trying to sneak out of a room that's
163. 6:25already watching you.
164. 6:26You could dive down and hide. Remember,
165. 6:29this animal hunts 2 km below you in
166. 6:32total darkness. Going deeper isn't
167. 6:35hiding. That's walking into its kitchen.
168. 6:38You could stay perfectly still. The
169. 6:40problem is the sperm whale doesn't need
170. 6:42you to move. It doesn't see you. It
171. 6:45hears you right down to the air inside
172. 6:48your lungs.
173. 6:49You could try to scare it off. And look,
174. 6:52I'm not saying I'd have a plan, but I'm
175. 6:54pretty sure splashing at the loudest
176. 6:56animal on Earth isn't going to win the
177. 6:58volume contest. So, the honest verdict
178. 7:01is this. If a sperm whale decided you
179. 7:03were a problem, there's not a single
180. 7:05thing you could do about it. It's really
181. 7:08easy to look at all this and assume
182. 7:10sperm whales are deep-sea monsters. But
183. 7:13here's the surprising part. They almost
184. 7:15never come after people at all. There's
185. 7:17no pattern of sperm whales hunting
186. 7:19humans. In places like Dominica, small
187. 7:23groups of permitted swimmers and
188. 7:24researchers spend time in the water near
189. 7:26them, and the whales mostly treat them
190. 7:28with a kind of calm curiosity. A sperm
191. 7:31whale wants you gone about as much as
192. 7:33you want a fly gone. It just isn't that
193. 7:36interested. Even their downtime is
194. 7:38strange. Sperm whales sleep in short
195. 7:41naps, floating straight up and down in
196. 7:43the water like giant motionless logs. A
197. 7:46whole family can hang there in silence
198. 7:48for a few minutes at a time. It's
199. 7:51honestly one of the eeriest things you
200. 7:52could ever swim into. The real danger
201. 7:55has always gone the other way. Whalers
202. 7:58hunted sperm whales for their oil for
203. 8:00centuries. By one widely cited
204. 8:03estimate, there were about 1.1 million
205. 8:05sperm whales before commercial whaling,
206. 8:08and only around a third of that number
207. 8:09by the end of the 20th century.
208. 8:12In the 1960s, whalers were killing up to
209. 8:1425,000 of them a year.
210. 8:18Commercial whaling largely stopped after
211. 8:20a ban in the '80s, but the problems
212. 8:22didn't stop with it. Today, sperm whales
213. 8:25get hit by ships, tangled in fishing
214. 8:27gear, and confused by underwater noise.
215. 8:30Some have washed up with stomachs full
216. 8:32of plastic bags and fishing nets. And in
217. 8:35places like Alaska and the Southern
218. 8:37Ocean, sperm whales have learned to pull
219. 8:39fish straight off longline fishing
220. 8:41hooks, which means the sperm whale and
221. 8:44the colossal squid have something in
222. 8:46common. They both got caught stealing
223. 8:48someone's dinner.
224. 8:50It's easy to see the sperm whale as a
225. 8:52monster, but this animal holds the ocean
226. 8:54together in ways most people never hear
227. 8:57about. When sperm whales feed in the
228. 8:59deep and then come up to breathe, they
229. 9:01release their waste near the surface.
230. 9:03And that waste is rich in iron. That
231. 9:06iron feeds tiny plankton, and those
232. 9:09plankton pull carbon out of the
233. 9:11atmosphere.
234. 9:12One study estimated that sperm whales in
235. 9:14the Southern Ocean remove around 240,000
236. 9:18tons of carbon every single year, more
237. 9:21than they release.
238. 9:22So, the biggest predator with teeth on
239. 9:24the planet is also, in a weird way,
240. 9:27gardening the ocean.
241. 9:29We tell ourselves nothing in the sea is
242. 9:31really looking for us. And honestly,
243. 9:33that's mostly true. But somewhere out
244. 9:36there, 2 km down in the dark, something
245. 9:39with the biggest brain on Earth is
246. 9:41listening, talking, and remembering.
247. 9:44It just has better things to do than us.
248. 9:47Anyway, thanks for watching this one. If
249. 9:49there's a deep-sea creature you want us
250. 9:51to cover next, let me know in the
251. 9:52comments. I do actually read them. And
252. 9:55if you want to see another video like
253. 9:56this one, check it out here.