Call me obsessive.
All this thinking about Colossal Squids had me thinking of the epic battles fought between predator and prey. The Sperm Whale is the largest living predator (if you define predator as preying upon self-functioning animals). As a child I remember seeing the diorama of a Sperm Whale and Giant Squid locked in battle at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This depiction was based not on photos or video evidence, but on the fact that often Sperm Whales bear scars from Giant and Colossal Squid tentacle suckers, and that they often find squid beaks in the Sperm Whales stomachs, leading the super smart people to realize that the Sperm Whales like to eat the squid, and the the squid, not liking this, fight back rather mightily.
Sperm whale: FAST FACTS (from AMNH)
Size: adults can reach 18 meters (60 feet) in length and weigh 35,000 - 50,000 kilograms (38-55 tons)
Food: primarily deep-sea squid, also fish and octopus
Life span: 50 to 80 years
Closest relatives: pygmy sperm whales and dwarf sperm whales
Fun fact: Sperm whales can hold their breath under water for up to two hours.
This drawing features a regular gray Sperm Whale, surfacing and exhaling through his blowhole. He is in the Southern Pacific near Antarctica so I added an iceberg, showing the tip protruding and the rest of it below the ocean surface. Of course he is eying his favorite prey floating many feet below him, a Colossal and Giant Squid.
Before the widespread use of petroleum products for lubricants, spermaceti were used to for a number of commercial applications.
Spermaceti, obtained primarily from the spermaceti organ in the head, and sperm oil, obtained primarily from the blubber in the body, were much sought after by 18th, 19th and 20th century whalers. These substances found a variety of commercial applications, such as candles, soap, cosmetics, machine oil, other specialized lubricants, lamp oil, pencils, crayons, leather waterproofing, rust-proofing materials and many pharmaceutical compounds. Ambergris, a solid, waxy, flammable substance produced in the digestive system of sperm whales, was also sought as a fixative in perfumery. American sperm whaling spread from the east coast of the American colonies to the Gulf Stream, the Grand Banks, West Africa (1763), the Azores (1765) and the South Atlantic (1770s). From 1770 to 1775 Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island ports produced 45,000 barrels of sperm oil annually, compared to 8,500 of whale oil.[84] In the same decade the British began sperm whaling, employing American ships and personnel.[85] By the following decade the French had entered the trade, also employing American expertise.[85] Sperm whaling increased until the mid-1800s. Spermaceti oil was important in public lighting (for example, in lighthouses, where it was used in the United States until 1862, when it was replaced by lard oil, in turn replaced by petroleum) and for lubricating the machines (such as those used in cotton mills) of the Industrial Revolution. Sperm whaling declined in the second half of the 19th century, as petroleum came in to broader use. In that sense, it may be said to have protected whale populations from even greater exploitation.
It is estimated that the historic worldwide population numbered 1,100,000 before commercial sperm whaling began in the early 18th century. By 1880 it had declined an estimated 29 per cent. From that date until 1946 the population appears to have recovered somewhat as whaling pressure lessened, but after the Second World War, the population declined even further, to only 33 per cent of the pre-whaling era.
The species was given full protection by the International Whaling Commission in 1985. This species is considered to be threatened.
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