Did you know that sperm whales have a sophisticated language that’s different in different parts of the world? That’s just like people in different countries who speak different languages.
Whales that speak the same language stick together in clans.
Sperm whales use a series of sonic clicks or codas in order to speak to each other. At 236 decibels, they are the loudest animals on the planet, with brains that are five times heavier than a human being.
Those codas are a form of Morse code that each clan teaches its young calves.
When the sperm whales communicate, it sounds identical to horses trotting on a hard, fast racetrack.
Sperms are the largest toothed whales and the only known enemy of giant 60-foot squids, weighing a whopping 1,250 pounds. They relentlessly search for the colossal squids in the darkness of the icy oceans more than two miles beneath the surface. It’s an unimaginable raging battle and a fight between the two largest predators and prey on the globe.
Sperm whales hunt using radar or echolocation. Each whale requires between 2,200 and 4,200 pounds of squid a day.
Sperms are cosmopolitan whales occupying both polar and equatorial seas, and it’s humbling to know that they have their own regional dialects.
Earth Dr Reese Halter’s latest book is Shepherding the Sea: The Race to Save Our Oceans.