WEBVTT - Leviathan: The Wolf of Whale Street 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:14.520 Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.520 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe, 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.080 I have a question for you. Okay, what's your favorite 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.759 sea monster from the Bible? How many are there? I 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:26.040 mean you've got to go Leviathan, right, yeah? Is there 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:29.120 another good sea monster? I guess there's the the whales 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:32.040 slash great fish that ate Jonah, that's right. Yeah. So 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:34.320 depending on how you interpret Leviathan, you could you could 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.720 be talking about two whales. Leviathan for anyone who's not 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:40.400 familiar shows up in the Book of Job. There's a 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:45.199 lot of sort of poetic discussion of the Leviathans, such 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:48.280 as can'st Thou'll draw out Leviathan within it with a 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:51.720 hook or his tongue with a cord, which thou lettest down. 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:54.520 I think the Leviathan of the Book of Job is 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:58.760 pretty clearly a fire breathing dragon, right well, but I 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:00.279 could never I can never really get a way from 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.640 the idea that it is some sort of hideous, gigantic 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:06.360 sea monster at least a sea serpent, if not a 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:08.960 whale of some sort But that's just that's just that's 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:11.720 just how I always looked to it. Well, I know 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.480 a lot of times people try to explain some of 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:18.080 the like the Leviathan and the Behemoth as being some 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:21.039 kind of interpretation on existing animals, like, oh, maybe it 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:23.240 was a whale, or maybe it was a saltwater crocodile 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:25.679 or something. I don't know. Why not go with a 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:28.080 fire breathing dragon. You got a fire breathing dragon on 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:29.960 your plate, and you're trying to say no, no, no, 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:33.280 I don't want it. Well, I also have to say, 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:36.400 for Behemoth, the other massive creature that's referenced in Job, 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:41.119 I have pretty much always imagined some sort of Warhammer 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.720 battle creature from from the Warhammer table tap game, some 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:48.480 sort of big, like armored fiery demon monster. Yeah. But 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.560 of course, the question of why the Leviathan and the 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.400 Behemoth are invoked in the Book of Job goes sort 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:57.160 of to the theology of the book, right, because they're 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:00.640 in the scene where God shows up and God's like, Hey, 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:04.400 who's the boss? Is it? You know it's me because 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.840 I can best even these top apex predators on the earth. Yeah, 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.120 primordial sea monsters or land monsters or what have you. 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:14.920 I can take them out, you can't. So I'm kind 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:16.880 of running the whole show here. But it invokes the 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:19.600 idea that there are some beast on earth so powerful, 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:22.360 so so tip top of the pyramid, that it would 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.600 take a god to best them. That's right. We when 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:29.280 we think of some of our top apex predators. Uh, 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:32.480 this is what we often invoked, these ideas, right, because well, 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:33.800 what do you think of when you think of an 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.760 apex predator. Well, maybe your mind turns to a tiger, 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.519 you know, tiger, tiger burning bright. You know, you can't 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:43.959 help but romanticize the power of this creature. Or perhaps 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:46.480 you think of the great white shark. I always think 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:50.799 of the shark. Yeah, I mean, it's just so powerful 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:54.000 and intimidating. It just it haunts our our our dreams. 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:57.240 Or perhaps you know, it's some visions of the mighty 0:02:57.400 --> 0:02:59.960 t rex, or perhaps the spina saurus if you want 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.840 some prehistoric flavor, or really any of the various prehistoric 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:07.640 land mammals that were particularly ferocious looking. So, what are 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.000 the qualities that you associate with an apex predator, the 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:14.079 predator at the tip top of the food chain? Well, generally, 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:16.400 you think it's gotta it's gotta be bigger than us, right, 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:18.440 I mean, it doesn't actually have to be bigger than us, 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:21.960 but it helps for us to pass that crown of 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:26.160 Apex Predator over to it um it. It needs to 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:29.200 be a ferocious predator obviously, and it needs to have 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:32.639 no enemies except for maybe us if we're particularly crafty, 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.880 and generally we are crafty enough to eradicate just about 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.640 anything on this planet. Come on, we're the enemy of everything. 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:41.920 It's always got us. Yeah, Really, the only things that 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.400 have a leg up in the battle against humans are 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:48.640 the smaller creatures such as say the mosquito or various 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:52.080 uh bacteria. Yeah, we're much more threatened to buy, say, 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.920 armies of unstoppable parasites, than we are by that single, 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:58.960 one powerful creature that that king or queen of the 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:01.400 animal world. Yeah. And part of that has to do 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:07.080 with the fragile nature of the the Apex throne, because 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:09.760 that's the thing about about the mighty Apex Predator. It's 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:13.280 rule is tentative. There's there's not only loneliness at the top, 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:17.720 but fragility and peril and ultimately who who knows how 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:23.080 many great apex predators have perished throughout the evolutionary timeline, 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:28.320 So many just massive toothy you know, flesh terrors have 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.560 just ultimately perished, and many of them lost to us 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:34.360 due to the rarity of their fossils. Yeah, that's exactly 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.599 the problem, right, How many t rex fossils do you 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.520 expect to find? Well, actually, not that many, because there 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:42.720 would you know, each time you go a step up 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:46.800 the food chain, they're going to be fewer individuals, and often, 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:50.880 especially with land dwelling animals, those fewer individuals are less 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.320 likely to end up in a place where they're likely 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:56.080 to get fossilized. So yeah, the top apex predators are 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.279 underrepresented in the fossil record. Those are just the ones 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:01.720 that leave good fossil traces. I mean. One of the 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.080 greatest s apex predators of all time, which we will 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.520 be talking about in today's episode partially, is the great shark, 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:12.200 the megalodon, which, because it's you know, this mostly cartilaginous fish, 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:15.200 it doesn't have a solid skeleton like so many other 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.200 animals do, so you you rarely even find all that 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:20.320 extensive of a trace of it. You have to find 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:24.159 its teeth and maybe little fragments of spinal pieces here 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:28.560 and there. You don't find whole intact megalodons, that's right. Meanwhile, 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.080 of course, as we've discussed, the trilobytes are everywhere. Now 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.160 when we think of giant, successful creatures that that prey 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:39.040 with impunity and uh and have few, if any enemies 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:42.080 in the natural world, we can't help but think of 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:45.279 of the giant whales, the great whales such as the 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:48.760 blue whale, the finback whale, the sperm whale, the right whale, 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:53.080 and the humpback whale. Man whales are such amazing creatures, 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:55.799 and we are going to be focusing on one particular 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:59.640 whale today, but also predatory whales in general. But especially 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.960 when you get into the larger whales, there's really nothing 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:05.680 on Earth like them. Oh yeah, I mean, for instance, 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:08.599 the blue whale is not only the largest creature on 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:11.640 Earth today, it is the largest creature known to have 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:14.919 ever existed ever. Yeah, like we're living the peak. You 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:19.159 can't go back into prehistoric timelines and find a bigger 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.919 blue whale, because the blue whale is the is the 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:26.000 upper limit that as least as far as we've experienced 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:28.919 it thus far as a planet. But that's not the 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.520 only whale superlative that's right. For instance, the sperm whale 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:36.120 has the largest brain ever to have existed on Earth. Yeah, 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:38.920 and that big brain is even there in the scientific 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:43.760 name of the sperm whale, which is visitor macrocephalus macrocephalus, 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:46.080 meaning big head. Now, I think there are a couple 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:48.120 of reasons for that. One of them is that it's 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:50.240 got the biggest brain ever, but another one is that, 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.719 of course it's got this giant, bloated forehead full of sperm, 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:58.040 the spermacetic organ and the big melon that's used in echolocation, 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:00.400 which we'll get to in a minute, but well, focus 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:03.719 on that brain. An adult sperm whales brain is about 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:08.160 eight thousand cubic centimeters on average, and if you compare 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:12.520 that to the mean human brain, which is about cubic centimeters, 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:15.840 you'll see the difference. Like, this is a whale, and 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:17.960 we we think of ourselves as like, wow, we got 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:20.160 the best biggest brain on the you know, in the world. 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:22.880 And of course brain size is not directly correlated to 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:26.520 intelligence as we would imagine intelligence, but we think of 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:29.400 ourselves as like the brain beast. We are the brain 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:32.880 animal and sperm whales have a brain that is about 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.240 five times bigger than ours. Now, one thing you might 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:38.840 wonder is, okay, you've got a blue whale that's much 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:41.680 bigger than a sperm whale, but it's got a smaller 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.960 brain than a sperm whale. Why is that? What would 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:48.040 that be due to? Well, I would hypothesize that might 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:50.360 have to do with the different ways these animals make 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:54.520 a living. So whales belong to the biological order Cetacea, 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:58.240 along with dolphins and porpoises, and from there, whales are 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:01.480 divided into two categories. You've got the billeen whales like 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:03.880 the blue whale and the humpback, and then you've got 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:07.040 the toothed whales like the orca or the killer whale, 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:10.320 and the sperm whales. So you might chalk up this 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:13.240 brain difference to the difference in the general trend of 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:19.600 encephialization ratios for active or raptorial predators versus more passive feeders. 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:22.560 Blue whales are filter feeders, I guess you could still 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.520 say their predators in a way. They prey on microscopic 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.240 organisms small not microscopic, but small organisms like krill and 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:33.200 copa pods. Swimming through these clouds of tiny crustaceans in 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:38.200 the sea with their mouths open and their buffet feasters. Well, 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:40.600 another way to think of it is that they're grazers, right, 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:43.480 They're they're not I mean, they're not herbivores, they're not 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:47.200 eating plants. They're eating animals, but they're grazing on these 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:52.480 vast patches of tiny animals that have no defensive capabilities 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.200 or anything like that. They're just sort of drifting through 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.520 their food. Yeah. Their whole approach is essentially, I'm just 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.120 gonna float around eat as much as I possibly can, 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:04.240 and I'm too big for anything to mess with me. Yeah, 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:06.880 and it's kind of beautiful. Actually. There are videos of 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:10.760 blue whales approaching these patches of of their food sources 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.079 like krill and stuff. So you'll see a large cloud 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:18.640 of just differently colored water essentially, and the blue whales 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:21.960 accelerate toward it, and right as they get toward there, 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:24.560 they just pry their mouths open. It looks like a 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:28.000 giant machine opening up to like accept a conveyor belt 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:29.960 or something, which in a way it kind of is. 0:09:30.240 --> 0:09:33.440 And you've just got this massive flow in of these 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.480 tiny organisms to get caught in its baleen plates the 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.920 mouth parts that catch the food so they can process it. Yeah, 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:42.120 and I don't want to imply that there's not an 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:45.439 intelligence and a beauty and a strategy to the feeding 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:49.040 practices of the baling whales, because you do find examples of, say, 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:53.600 humpback whales employing a sort of social strategy sometimes to 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:57.480 consume their prey. But sperm whales, on the other hand, 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.000 are more active hunters, so they often i've deep to 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:04.520 catch their prey, which is mostly giant squid, but they 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.600 also hunt fish and octopus and larger crustaceans and sometimes 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:12.640 even sharks. So all around the world I mentioned this 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:15.959 incephialization quotation. All around the world, it's a pretty common 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:20.240 rule that predatory hunters didn't have larger brains than the 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:23.200 prey they hunt, and this implies a great need for 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:26.280 processing power, not necessarily what we would think of as 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:30.560 intelligence and the kind of abstract human intelligence that we 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:34.079 associate with. I don't know math problems or spatial problem 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:37.479 solving or i Q tests or anything. I think biologists 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.720 tend to think that sperm whales likely need these big 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:44.560 brains for perception, which is a kind of intelligence on 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.840 its own right. Generally on land, a predator needs to 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:50.480 have sharp senses to help it at like track and 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:53.320 spy on prey, you know, to sense prey from far away, 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:55.520 to stay on top of it, to be very aware 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:58.400 of its surroundings. And on land this is very often 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.160 sight and smell. But spur whales, on the other hand, 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:05.520 hunt mostly in this dark world of sound, hunting and 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:09.640 mapping its surroundings by echolocation, where it uses these organs 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:12.880 in its head to slap tissues together and create these 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:15.880 clicks that they are then reflected out into the water, 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:19.000 and it listens for the echoes of these clicks reflecting 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.200 back to it off of anything that has a different 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.439 density than the water itself. So you have to if 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.120 you're trying to imagine the inner life of a sperm whale, 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:31.560 imagine yourself as a creature with a huge, powerful brain 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:35.640 so highly tuned for sound that their internal picture of 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.920 the world around them in a totally dark place is 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.640 as rich and fine grained based on sound as our 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:45.160 picture of the world is based on light. It's kind 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:48.559 of impossible to put yourself in that headspace. But yeah, 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:51.560 and and then I mean and also almost impossible for 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:54.440 us as humans to imagine that this creature. Uh, it's 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:58.240 it's ancient ancestor with some sort of like essentially like 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:00.880 a land wolf. Oh yeah, uh, I mean that. That's 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:03.200 one of the craziest things is that you've always got 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:06.520 to remember with whales, these creatures were not always in 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:10.439 the water. They evolved from land dwelling mammals. So you 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:14.040 might wonder, once you're one of the larger whales, do 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:16.959 you really have any enemies to worry about it all? 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:19.160 Like if you are a sperm whale, if you're one 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:23.160 of these powerful dark world predators that's you know, got 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.000 the biggest brain in the entire animal kingdom, one of 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:28.960 the biggest bodies in the entire animal kingdom. Is there 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.880 any enemy out there for you in the wild? Not really? 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.760 Probably only orcas really the worka or the killer whale. 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:40.920 But orcas are also fascinating whale predators. I was reading 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.680 article in The Guardian by a marine biologist named Lawrence 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:49.880 Smith about how orca's will sometimes attack great white sharks 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:53.160 to eat their livers. You ever heard about this? Yeah, 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.640 it's amazing. So apparently shark livers are just like Jack 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.679 Pott marine nutrition. They're packed with more than ninety three 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:04.400 per sent lipid's triascle glycerols. And Smith compares a great 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:06.959 white shark liver to quote a deep fried Mars bar 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:12.120 with added vitamins. So it's packed with fat, rich, richly nutritious, 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:15.120 but also lots of hard to come by nutrients in 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:17.640 the ocean. So how do you get a great white 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.080 sharks liver? Right? A great white shark that's a rough customer, right, Yeah, 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:23.600 I mean that. Yeah, even as delightful as that liver 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:25.200 is gonna be, you're gonna have to get through the 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:27.760 great white and all those teeth to have a bite 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:30.160 of it. But apparently orca's don't have all that hard 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:34.160 a time at it, because orca's are highly evolved, incredibly 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:37.360 adept apex predators, and they can even prey on other 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:41.000 apex predators like sharks. They are pack hunters. Yeah, and 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:45.880 so the trick, Lauren Smith explains, and this fascinating article 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:48.560 is that you give the shark the old flip flop. 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:53.360 So she writes a quote. During a n encounter off 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.520 the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco, a 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:00.200 group of whale watchers witnessed an orca ramming into the 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.760 side of a great white shark, momentarily stunning it and 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:06.720 allowing the orca to flip it over and holding it 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:11.280 in place ventral belly up for around fifteen minutes, after 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:14.480 which the orca began consuming its prey, much to the 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.720 surprise of the whale watchers on board. A similar incident 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:21.440 was captured on film off Costa Rica, and this time 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.280 the orcas prey was a tiger shark. And it's not 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:26.840 just sharks. Orcas have been observed doing the same to 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:30.080 sting rays too, So what's going on here, Like, how 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:33.240 come an orca can ram a shark, flip it upside 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:36.960 down and then just eat its liver with impunity. Well, 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:40.600 apparently sharks and rays have a nervous system security backdoor, 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:44.400 and it's known as tonic immobility. And this is a 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:48.400 state of paralysis that alasmo bronx, which are sharks raisin skates, 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.880 fall into when they get positioned upside down in the water. 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:55.320 So you flip a shark belly up ventral side up, 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.840 and it'll go catatonic and lose muscle control. Basically just 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:00.960 goes into a coma and till it can get flipped 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:03.720 around again. So what's the adaptive value in this? You've 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:07.000 gotta wonder why a shark would have an exploit like this. 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:09.480 Nobody knows for sure, but it has been suggested this 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:14.120 might somehow be used in mating practices. Okay, well that 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:15.760 would that would make sense. That would be like the 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:19.360 one time where it might be important for a shark, 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:25.840 a highly aggressive predator, to be at least mildly incapacitated 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.960 by it's uh, it's it's the mating shark. Yeah, But 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.480 all this to illustrate how orcas are these amazing whale 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:37.400 predators themselves. So do they pose any threat to sperm whales? Well, 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:41.400 pods of orca's will sometimes attempt to separate sperm whale 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:44.040 calves from their mothers and eat them. Uh. And I 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:47.440 actually did find one account from a paper published in 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.640 Marine Mammal Science in two thousand and six about a 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:55.040 large herd of orcas attacking a pod of nine sperm whales, 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:58.920 including sperm whale adults and and preying on them. Yeah. 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.960 It's actually kind of a a horrifying scene. They describe 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:04.680 where the sperm whales would circle up in this defensive 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:07.640 posture where they kind of make a ring to defend 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.680 themselves and try to fend off the killer whale attacks. 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.160 But the orcas were coming at them, and the in 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:16.440 the it says that the orca has employed a wound 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:19.080 and withdraw strategy, so they go in and try to 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:21.960 injure the sperm whales and then back away, because of 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.080 course the sperm whale is a very dangerous enemy, and 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:27.360 you know, you could be seriously injured trying to prey 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:29.560 on one. So yeah, there was at least this one 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.560 account I found of killer whales praying on adult sperm whales, 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.880 But generally it seems like sperm whales, once they're adults, 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.040 they're in good health, they're pretty much unassailable in the ocean. 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.480 They don't really have natural enemies except for the occasional 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.000 large herd attack of killer whales. And then of course 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:49.880 this one other enemy, this one, and that would of 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.440 course be a humans, because we are we are and 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:57.440 have been the main enemy of the great whales. Uh, 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:00.800 certainly within the confines of human history, certainly in the 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:04.000 last couple of hundred years, we are the apex hunters 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.439 who hunted them relentlessly and drove several species to the 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:10.240 brink of extinction. I mean you compare us to the orcas, 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:12.560 who again are mainly going to be a threat to 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.280 young whales, And there is certainly some there's some heartbreaking 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:20.880 documentary footage out there of orcas hunting a mother and 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:24.760 her young whale across the seas. But humans, but are 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:28.600 whaling practice to just prey on everything? Yeah? The counterpoint 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.160 to that orca hunting is if you get to witness 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:34.760 the protective practices of the adult, like the mother sperm whale, 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:37.919 that's pretty amazing too. Yes, But it depends on the 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:40.879 documented is some document if it's an Attenborough documentary, I 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:43.960 don't necessarily trust that he is not going to break 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:47.359 my heart with some terrifying predation. Well, there's a lot 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:49.399 of heartbreak in the ocean. Yeah, I mean, there's no 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.720 denying it. But basically I end up approaching it this 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:54.439 way because I'll watch a lot of documentaries with my 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:58.000 son and it's it's gotten to the point where it's 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:00.520 kind of a toss up, like how he's gonna respond 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:04.359 to the predation Because used to like any predation, especially 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:06.960 there's dramatic music. He would get a little upset about. 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:11.320 But but now, at almost six years old, he's surprisingly 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:14.600 chill with some grotesque levels of pre date predation, Like 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:18.119 it'll be three leopard cubs feasting on a corpse and 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:20.480 I'll come in and I'll I'll walk over and I'll 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.040 see this, and we're like, are you Are you okay 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:24.480 with this, buddy, And he says, he says, oh, yeah, 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:27.920 they're brothers. They're hungry. That's fine, Robert. I think you've 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:30.360 just come up with a great children's show, The Hungry Brothers. 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.359 It's it's all about how you frame it right now. 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.439 One of the questions that the flip flop of all 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:40.879 this is do sperm whales ever attack humans? This is 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.320 something that has been a point of controversy, though there 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.520 are definitely reports, especially reports from the nineteenth century, of 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:52.879 for example, sperm whales ramming ships. Now, it's hard to 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:57.479 tell if these accounts are accurate, but sailors from like 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.800 Simpkins ships in the nineteenth century did report it sometimes. Yes, 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:03.840 what happened is a sperm whale rammed our ship until 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:06.840 we sank it, like attacked us with the intent to 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:10.680 kill us. And you know, it's hard to imagine if 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:13.200 that's even true to begin with, It's hard to imagine 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:15.720 what's going on in the mind of the sperm whale, 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:18.800 though I have also read comments from sub marine biologists 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:21.320 too think, well, yeah, it's possible that, for example, a 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:24.639 sperm whale might ram a ship if it perceived that 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.760 ship as a threat, which a sperm whale could have 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:30.240 good reasons to do, especially in the nineteenth century with 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:34.159 horrible whaling practices. I mean, if you read about some 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:36.680 of the whaling practices that were in place, then it's 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:40.480 worse than any Attenborough documentary. It's it's just the most 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:43.920 sadistic kind of methods. One I read about was where 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:48.239 the whalers would kidnap a calf whale, injure it, and 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:51.119 then keep it they're injured, waiting for the parents to 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:53.520 come and try to rescue it, at which point they'd 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:57.439 harpoon the parents. Yeah, I mean, I mean, certainly the 0:19:57.480 --> 0:19:59.800 individuals participating this at the time, you do have to 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:02.199 re eyes. Yeah, they were, they were participating in an 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.399 in an industry, and this probably not everyone's first choice. 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:08.440 It's true, I mean, I shouldn't judge too much. I mean, 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.040 and in some cases this is also a cultural practice 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:13.959 that I I shouldn't pass too much judgment on that, 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:17.560 but but certainly the whaling industry, Yeah, but certainly the 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:21.320 whaling industry did become such an industry that it is. 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:23.919 It is difficult, if not impossible, to look back on 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:27.239 it now and not feel a little sick about it. Like, uh, 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:30.600 when I was a kid in Newfoundland, Canada for a while, 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:33.120 I remember we would uh, at least on one occasion, 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:38.000 we we walked through an abandoned uh whaling port uh. 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:39.960 And it was it was even then when I only 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:42.200 like really kind of partially understood everything, it was kind 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.600 of haunting because you would find these like whale vertebrae, 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.960 and then there would be these big rusted harpoons, like 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:52.000 the blunt harpoons, and then the as well as some 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:54.879 of the pointed ones as well. And these were like 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:57.399 the later day ones, the ones that would have been uh, 0:20:57.440 --> 0:20:59.800 you know, launched off of a canon I understand, not 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:03.879 the the romantic moby Dick era harpoons. I feel like 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:06.320 there's another way in which whaling sort of violates our 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:08.560 hunting intuitions, which is, I mean a lot of people 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.560 would feel terrible about any kind of killing of an animal, 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:14.879 But somehow there's an intuition that killing an animal to 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.000 harvest its meat for food is kind of different than 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:21.040 like killing an animal to melt it down and render 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:24.320 it's fat for industrial purposes, which is a lot of 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:27.600 what was going on with lamps, etcetera. Yeah, Now, as 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:30.760 you mentioned earlier, uh, a lot of these stories of 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:33.520 like whales ramming ships, We're not completely sure what happened. 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:36.120 There's a there are there's a lot of legend that 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:40.040 that rises up surrounding the activity of whales during the 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:43.320 height of the whaling industry. Uh. And then there of 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:48.600 course whole myths of sperm whales, in particular swallowing humans whole. 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:52.920 Is that true? Did that really happen? Uh? So I've 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:54.600 looked into this in the into the in the past 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:56.439