In order to prey on squid, sperm whales dive from 0 altitude to 3 km below the surface.
● Stranded sperm whales, these white scratches on the top of the head are left by large squid.
The pressure change during this period is the difference between 0 atmospheres and 300 atmospheres, and to date, no nuclear submarine has been able to dive to a depth of 3 kilometers.
This depth is already 10 times the depth of the average submarine, which is 5 times the depth of the Seawolf-class nuclear submarine, and if the Seawolf-class nuclear submarine dives to this depth, it will be crushed.
Sperm whales are one of the few mammals that has overcome fears of the deep sea.
<h1>Overcoming decompression sickness, sperm whales have a special way of storing oxygen. </h1>
Sperm whales can dive for an average of 45 minutes, which is already very, very remarkable, but they can dive for up to 2 hours.
Many people think that if you want to dive into water for such a long time, you must have large lungs, and the actual whale lungs are relatively small, smaller than those of land mammals in terms of size. Because, at depth dives, the whales' lungs are flattened, and their bodies are completely solid.
So where does the sperm whale's oxygen come from? The answer is that they carry all their oxygen in the blood and muscles.
Sperm whales have unusually high levels of protein, called hemoglobin and myoglobin, which store oxygen in the blood and muscles. This also gives their muscles and blood a deep red, almost black color.
Sperm whale diving lowers the heart rate and prevents blood from flowing to certain parts of the body, temporarily shutting down organs such as the kidneys and liver while hunting.
This allows them to dive deep into the sea in search of prey. It takes only 20 to 30 minutes for sperm whales to return to the surface from the deep sea.
However, if people return to the sea from deep water, they must gradually reduce the pressure in the decompression chamber to prevent the sudden release of bubbles of supersaturated gases dissolved in the blood by high pressure, and the tiny bubbles will block the blood vessels, causing tissue hypoxia and necrosis.
Divers from the deep sea return to the surface from 140 meters underwater must go through 7 days and 7 nights of decompression in the decompression chamber.
This shows how perfectly the sperm whale's body evolved.
<h1>Sperm whales have small eyes, but have the largest sonar in the animal kingdom. </h1>
Sperm whales have a large head on their head that occupies almost 1/3 of the entire body. There is a large cavity, filled with pure and transparent whale brain oil, and there is a lot of fat tissue behind the brain oil chamber.
Scientists believe that the sound waves of sperm whales are focused and divergent by brain oil, sending out sound pulses in different modes.
Like all mammals, sperm whales have two nasal passages, and their nasal passages are very long, with the left nasal passage leading to the ventilation hole at the top of the head for breathing and the right nasal passage for making sounds.
Sperm whales force air through the right nasal passage to reach the vocal organ, the monkey lip, which makes a sound through the tremor of the monkey lip. The sound is also reflected once and then emitted into the water through brain oil.
Sperm whales can scan the sonar in water by changing the shape of the brain oil cavity.
According to the scientists' research, the sonar of sperm whales has 4 scanning modes, with frequencies ranging from about 1000 Hz to 100 Hz.
The long-range search sonar emits a "creak" sound like a door, and a "click" sound occurs when the target is locked. There are also two frequencies of sound waves, which may be used for connection and social interaction between groups, as well as courtship responses, but the exact meaning is not yet known.
The propagation speed of sound waves in water can reach 1.5 kilometers per second, and targets can be located at long distances.
According to scientists, the food of sperm whales is almost entirely composed of squid and octopus.
With the exception of soft cephalopod octopus and squid, only one species of fish is pleasing to their appetite.
Adult sperm whales eat a ton of squid a day, so diving into the deep sea in search of large squid is a must-have part of life.
Squid live on the ocean floor thousands of meters deep, and scientists know very little about them.
When sperm whales and squid wrestle, the shocking wounds leave us with clues about the size of these squid individuals.
<h1>The tentacles of the big squid are very powerful. </h1>
Take, for example, the king squid has suction cups on their tentacles, each with sharp teeth.
● This photo is a comparison of the size of the squid sucker scar and the size of the human foot on the skin of the stranded sperm whale on the beach.
The squid tentacles that leave such large scars are at least 10 centimeters in diameter, and the octopus individual weighs about 550 kilograms.
Specimens of large squid currently caught by humans are 7.8 meters long and weigh 280 kilograms.
The 550 kg squid can grow to about 10 meters.
But this weight is only 2% of the sperm whale's weight, so the squid is not a match for the sperm whale at all.
Large squid of 13 to 15 meters in length may live in the deep sea, and there may be larger squid, but no living organisms have been found, and no specimens have been found, but there are clues in the stomachs of sperm whales.
●The mouth of the squid, also called the beak, is a hard eagle-billed structure composed of keratin, which is the same as the composition of tiger claws, eagle claws, and human nails.
When sperm whales prey on large squid, they will swallow this part together into the stomach, keratin is difficult to digest by the gastric juice of sperm whales, so it will be better preserved in the stomach. When excreted, in order to prevent scratching the intestines, the stomach and intestines will secrete a layer of wax wrapped around these hard objects, which are then excreted from the feces. These excreted feces drift in the ocean for a long time, and they will form ambergris.
The larger the mouth, the larger the individual of the squid, and according to today's specimens, the beak is about 1/75 of the body length.
Squid beaks up to 25 cm in diameter have been found in the stomach of sperm whales.
According to the body size, such squid can reach a body length of 18 meters and a weight of up to 3.5 tons.
Squid of this size are close to the 100,000-pound squid that sailors legend has.
● A specimen of the skin of a sperm whale preserved in 1919, the circle on which is full of suction cup prints of squid.
<h1>The legendary sailing story in which a large squid wraps its tentacles around a sailboat may be true. </h1>
Scientists initially thought that squid lived on the deep seabed of thousands of meters, but now they have been found to chase their prey to the surface.
The giant squid's favorite prey is the lanternfish, which chase them from the deep sea to the shallow sea. After preying on prey, they quickly return to the deep sea to avoid sperm whale swarms.
In fact, in 1500, fishermen found these giant red squid in the sea.
● People used to think that giant squid were sea monks or mermaids.
Historians at the time did not associate these "fish" with cephalopods. People at the time confused the appearance of these squid with the appearance of humans, calling them "head like a man, scarlet dress like a monk's cloak", calling them "sea monks".
It wasn't until the mid-1800s that Professor Japetus Steenstrup of Denmark, a cephalopod expert at the time, came to the conclusion that the mythical beast was actually a very large squid.
These large squid swim to the surface of the sea, and may encounter human fishing boats and clash with humans.
So the legend of sailors who encountered a large squid is probably true. Moreover, on the surface of the sea, the squid will also encounter natural enemies, sperm whales, and then fight with sperm whales.
These stories, which may have been passed down by word of mouth by sailors, became exaggerated and distorted, but they were not empty.