Usually, when talking about interesting sea creatures, they mention dolphins, sharks or whales.
But everyone is forgetting about another unique sea creature, which has many records and unsolved mysteries.
You know that a whale can stay underwater for about 30 minutes (50 under extreme conditions, such as chasing whalers) and does not dive very deep. But the sperm whale can stay under water for more than an hour and dive to a depth of more than a kilometer.
Some researchers argue that sperm whales dive to a depth of about 3000 meters, where the gigantic pressure should simply flatten them, and huge lungs, for such a volume of oxygen, simply explode.
But no. Why?
The sperm whale has half the lungs of whales. And all because his air supply is stored in the muscles of the body and one nostril. It has a nostril, one left, and the right one has long been overgrown and has become a separate "reservoir" for storing air.
Promotional video:
The sperm whale does not have decompression sickness (nitrogen ingress into the bloodstream) due to its rapid rise from great depths. He literally flies out like a cork from a champagne bottle and nothing happens to him at all. Researchers are still wrestling with this question, but it is believed that the blood plasma of the sperm whale has an increased ability to dissolve nitrogen, preventing this gas from forming microbubbles.
The sperm whale has the longest intestines in the world, although carnivores tend to have shorter intestines than herbivores. But the sperm whale is not like that - it has grown its intestines up to 160 meters, and no one knows why it needs it.
By the way, tapeworms 30 meters long live in the intestines of the sperm whale.
And he also carries with him a "jewel" in the very intestines - this is ambergris, which all perfumers in the world hunt for. In one of the most common versions, ambergris is secreted as a result of irritation of the intestinal mucosa caused by the horny beaks of squid swallowed by a sperm whale, in any case, in pieces of ambergris, you can always find many undigested cephalopod beaks.
And by the way - ambergris is found exclusively in the intestines of males, but disputes about how it comes out of there - in a natural way or belching are still going on.
And the sperm whale also has spermaceti. No, this is not what you thought - it is a bunch of fluid in the head, which is known for its incredible regenerating properties - it heals any wounds and is used to make anti-burn ointments.
Why is he a sperm whale in his impenetrable head? Scientists believe that in order to give direction to sound waves during echolocation, as well as for shock absorption. But this body clearly has other functions. Sometimes it is believed that the spermaceous organ can serve for cooling, that is, removing some of the heat from the body of the sperm whale.
And in the sperm whale, each tooth, which is located only on the lower jaw, weighs about 3 kilograms - with these jaws they can easily break whole boats. There are cases when an angry sperm whale drowned fishing vessels. And the sperm whale is one of the most violent and dangerous animals.
A sperm whale can completely swallow a person (although whales can also), but a case is known when a swallowed person survived in the stomach of a sperm whale - they caught it, ripped open the stomach, and the person inside was just sleeping.
And this is how sperm whales sleep.
At a depth of 10-15 meters, they drift vertically, in a flock. They need 15 minutes to sleep several times a day and are ready to be active again. By the way, if necessary, they may not sleep for about three months in a row.
It is believed that one of the thickest and most impenetrable skins is the skin of a whale shark, the thickness of which is 15 cm. But the thickness of the sperm whale's skin is 35 cm. And this is an absolute record in the world.
And sperm whales have the largest brain among mammals - it weighs 8 kilograms.
But the most interesting thing is that the sperm whale feeds exclusively on squids and not simple ones, but gigantic ones, after which they dive to such a depth. There is a known case when a squid simply did not fit into the stomach of a sperm whale and entangled it with its tentacles sticking out of its mouth. Although the stomach of a sperm whale holds 500 liters of liquid. The weight of this squid was 200 kilograms.
Sperm whales are also found with scars from fighting giant squids. So, the largest squid sucker we know of is 5 cm in diameter, and the scars on a sperm whale with a diameter of more than 20 cm. Imagine this dinner plate, and now imagine there are 100-150 of them on tentacles alone and you will understand with what "victims" to deal with a sperm whale. He's just a monster!
Cool and mysterious master of the oceans …
Author: Prostoilogin