In the fog, the villagers of Malera sail high, leave the mainland, and lie on their pillows, under which is the bustling swarm of whales.
Ancient whales sing hoarsely, and in the song, countless civilization empires are recorded; in the songs, countless curious and fearless lives are recorded; in the songs, there are countless ancient and uncountable stories and legends...
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > descendant of the ancient bloodline, the sperm whale</h1>
·“ Whale of the Abyss"
Sperm whales are the largest surviving species in the intricate family of whales, dating back 20 million years. Although they parted ways with their close relatives, beaked whales, the numbers could still reach their peak in the Miocene.
Known as the "Whale of the Abyss", the sperm whale is even larger, and the adult male sperm whale can reach more than 16 meters in size. What is even more breathtaking is that in some records, some long-lived old sperm whales can reach 20m, and on Nantucket Island in the United States, there is a male jaw specimen up to 5.5m long, and legend has also appeared 26m long "whale king".
The jawbone alone is 5.5 m, which can be deduced that the whale may have been between 21'22 m before it was born.
It was not until the late Neocele that sperm whale species began to decline, and killer whales began to rise and gradually adopted sperm whales as the largest predatory marine life in the ocean. Although it has been replaced, this does not seem to affect the speed of sperm whale development in the slightest, and there will still be a large number of sperm whales with diverse habits swimming in the ancient ocean, and even three sperm whale species have been preserved so far.
Later, with the continuous evolution of the species, the maxillary teeth of the sperm whale also began to gradually degenerate, leaving only the mandibular teeth. It is not as agile in the sea as other ancient relatives, and it is precisely because of this huge body that it is almost impossible to meet opponents in the ocean, and the title of "ocean strongman" is even more deserved.
Whale fossils preserved in stone
The brain shell is not filled with water, but with "oil"?
In addition to the huge size of the sperm whale, the most special thing is its big head. In its surprisingly large head stored about a thousand liters of whale brain oil, it also divided it into two parts.
At its head, there are many cerebellar oil tanks that are cut into small pieces by connective tissue. Combining the characteristics of sperm whales that like to collide, scientists initially speculated that this is a buffer system for sperm whales, and when they are hit hard, these small brain oil tanks will look like sponges stacked together, protecting the head of the impact (buffering effect) to the greatest extent. The same structure exists on fossils of extinct sperm whales.
Structure of the sperm whale's head
The massive brain oil vessel is another part of the sperm whale's storage. There are many opinions among the brain oil scholars in this section, one of which is that the evolved sperm whale has the habit of latent predation in the deep sea, and the melting point of whale brain oil is almost the same as the body temperature of sperm whales, and if the sperm whale can inhale cold air, then it can control the melting (coagulation) of whale brain oil in this way. In the process, the proportion of the body is also changed in order to assist the sperm whale to complete the up-and-down.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > source of light and a source of misfortune</h1>
The sperm whale, which has no natural enemy, has been cultivating in the abyss for nearly ten million years, but it has been broken by a land species. While they bring light to sperm whales, they also bring them never-ending nightmares.
The discovery of whale brain oil is the beginning of the nightmare
Whaling, before the 18th century, almost no one would hunt sperm whales except for the villagers in La Mallera, Indonesia. It was not until 1712 that a whaling team, while on the way to pursue a right whale, encountered a group of sperm whales, so they caught several sperm whales, and it was this unexpected move that launched the first shot to kill sperm whales. Because hunters have found that there is another liquid in the sperm whale's brain- whale brain oil.
Villagers in Lamarle hunt sperm whales
They found that whale brain oil is a kind of wealth, and the fixed whale brain oil burns with a small odor, which perfectly replaces the unpleasant odor produced by the burning of the whale oil. The whale brain oil candle produced in 1743 further promoted the development of a hunting behavior, and with the rapid rise of the United States, people who had discovered the way to make money began to hunt sperm whales in a frenzy.
With the rapid development of emerging economies, the demand and volume of whale brain oil have continued to soar, rising to 4 times in just a decade, the price has risen by 25%, and New England has gradually become the center of global sperm whale hunting. More and more hunting fleets began to appear at sea level, and the spray-steaming fleets were like one after another burning whale brain oil. In the first half of the 19th century, it became the "golden age" of sperm whale hunting.
Oil, even can not save the annual sperm whale
The sperm whale tragedy lasted until 1895, when Tetasville, Pennsylvania, discovered oil, and by refining oil, the kerosene derived from it greatly exceeded the clarity and illumination of whale brain oil and blubber oil, and the oil production was higher than that of whale brain oil. An oil well can extract 3,000 barrels of crude oil in just one day, and a cruise ship that goes to sea to hunt can bring back 400 barrels of whale oil in 2 years. In contrast, the development value of oil wells is even greater.
As a result, the whaling industry has also declined rapidly, and the impending population crisis has begun to disappear. But what no one expected was that the racial crisis that had just begun to improve was soon followed by a new crisis.
After the end of the Second World War, the global economic system began to recover, and some oil-based personal consumption machinery (automobiles) began to sweep the world and showed an increasingly common trend. For these machines, lubricants are the best materials to maintain their parts and prevent wear.
Not coincidentally, whale brain oil is the best lubricant. And after a series of later processing, it can also become an additive with good performance. At that time, the equipment of the hunting industry had long since ceased to be as backward as before, but had grown into an emerging technology, and whaling sonar and long-distance whaling forks were also devices that could be seen everywhere on the ship, and a wave of operation became rapid and ruthless. Like the Essex, sperm whales crashing into sunken whaling ships never happen again.
The efficient operation made the global whaling scale at that time look like a male lion that had been angered, and proudly raised its head.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the promulgation of the ban on fishing, can it really end this ruthless "fight"? </h1>
In 1988, as the number of sperm whales decreased, the sperm whale population began to gradually dry up, and the residents, aware of the seriousness of the problem, began to gradually appeal to people everywhere to stop hunting this creature, and promulgated the Convention for the Prohibition of Whaling, and the huge fighting ended, and the few sperm whales that were counted as a few finally breathed a sigh of relief and returned to the quiet territory that belonged to them.
To this day, turning over that period of history again, the scene of yesterday's whaling seems to be vividly remembered, the desperate roar of sperm whales, the shattered home......... Time and again, inhuman plunder and abuse have brought endless wealth and resources to mankind, but they have pronounced "death sentences" on the objects of plunder.
Nor can the limitations of the law stop the ambitions of human nature
The promulgation of the Convention against Whaling has greatly protected the rights and interests of sperm whales, but people's hearts are insatiable. Under the guise of "scientific investigation", Japan carries out some collective commercial whaling activities, and even kills some rare whale species. Even in the wake of widespread protests by the World Peace Organization, they say they will resume whaling in Antarctic waters in 2015-2016.
At the end of the sperm whale song and the curtain of history, who will be the next to sing the song of life?