Recently, the 4D special effects movie "Sperm Whale vs Squid King" premiered, and the little cousin watched it and said good.
The little cousin asked a question:
Why is the English name of sperm whale called spram whale so dirty?
Hearing this question, Xiaoyu was full of black question marks, and later checked a wave of information to find the reason.
The scientific name of the sperm whale is Physeter macrocephalus, which is also called cachalot/'kæʃəlɔt/in English, but more people will call it the common name of this filth: sperm whale.
The word sperm/spɜːm/ is derived from the Latin sperma, which means "seed, jingzi", and the sperm whale is called spram whale because of misunderstanding.
The late 18th to 19th centuries was the heyday of commercial whaling. When people were whaling, they found that the whale had a huge organ on its head, filled with a white, slippery liquid.
Whalers judged this to be jingzi based on "common sense", so they called this whale sperm whale.
In fact, biologists call this organ a whale brain oil device, and the liquid in it is certainly not spram, but spramoleti, which is generally called whale brain oil, whale oil, or whale wax. Because when it dries up, it becomes a waxy solid.
The yellow part is the whale brain oil device
Studies have found that spermaceti is a substance that helps whales to float up and down and echolocate.
More importantly, later people also discovered its important commercial value. For example, it can produce candles, lamp oil, cosmetics, lubricating oil, etc.
Before the middle of the 20th century, when oil was not yet an important energy source and was developed and used, cetacean was an important raw material for the production of the capitalist empire.
In addition, it has also been found that the dried product of the intestinal endocrine of sperm whales in the sperm whale family is a solid waxy combustible substance in the form of silver gray or black, with its unique sweet earthy fragrance.
This dried product is called "ambergris", also known as "dragon's belly".
Ambergris is expensive, comparable to gold. Therefore, since ancient times, ambergris has been used as a high-grade spice.
However, as protection of sperm whales has been introduced, commercial whaling has decreased and natural ambergris has been banned from being used as a spice product.