1) Sperm whales are highly intelligent and social animals that often travel in large groups known as "superpods" containing dozens or even hundreds of individuals. 2) They demonstrate complex social behaviors like protecting each other and their young from threats like orcas. Mothers will even strand themselves on beaches to stay with sick or injured relatives. 3) While male sperm whales do compete aggressively with each other, the whales are generally not bloodthirsty. Their primary prey, giant squid, are often consumed whole with little visible damage. Humans posed the greatest threat to sperm whales through commercial whaling.

1. Ahab’s Nemesis
By
Mark Hager
Frequent Lanka visitor, Moby-Dick’s vicious loner is actually a docile social butterfly (mostly)
Does Melville intend this particular irony? Sure, in Captain Ahab’s vengeful fantasies,
the weirdly white sperm whale who swallowed his leg seems to embody pure evil, while for
narrator Ishmael, Ahab’s obsession with slaying his nemesis may itself be evil incarnate:
arrogant humanity exterminating ‘innocent’ nature. But does Melville--seasoned seagoer he--
know something of sperm whale temperament that his character Ahab does not? Melville’s main
scientific source, Thomas Beale’s The Natural History of the Sperm Whale, refutes allegations of
bloodthirstiness, but Moby-Dick makes much of the creature’s bad reputation in the tales and
legends of whalers.
Ex-pat amateur naturalist Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne convincingly suggests that Sri
Lanka may be one of the best places in the world to see sperm whales. Even more interesting, he
musters evidence that Lanka may be the best place in the world to see sperm whale
‘superpods’—dozens of the awesome beasts assembled and visible at the same time. A super-pod
off Kalpitiya in early 2010, for example, numbered some 60-70 animals, according to Navy
sources. A gathering off Trincomalee in March 2012 may have numbered up to 250, as
experienced observers estimated. Comparing such sightings with those elsewhere, de Silva
Wijeyeratne nominates Sri Lanka as world capital in terms of super-pod frequency, density and
viewability.
At seventeen pounds, the sperm whale brain is the largest of any creature ever: evidence
of high intelligence though her brain/body weight ratio does not match ours. She scores high in
sociability as well. We understand more and more that high intelligence in vertebrates correlates
with high sociability. Nimbleness in navigating complex social spaces requires, rewards and
nurtures braininess. In Leviathan or, The Whale, Philip Hoare contends that sperm whales “have
the most complex social structure of any animal other than man.” He does not explain how he
reaches that conclusion (elephants? chimps? hyenas?) and by what criteria, but he does offer
some intriguing anecdote.
Like elephants, sperm whales typically move in clusters of juveniles and mature females,
who share in care for the young. When mother dives for food, she leaves her calf for her cluster
to babysit. Networks of trust, communication and exchange of favors must be dense. Neuronal
connections likewise, very likely. When orcas (killer whales) threaten, sperm whales encircle
their young in cooperative formation. They may face inward, presenting a firing line of powerful
flukes outward against assailants, or they may face outward with their dangerous toothed jaws.
They will protect each other and each other’s young even at high peril to themselves. Entire

2. families have been known to strand themselves on beaches so as to keep company with a sick or
injured relative. Different pods use different ‘dialects’ of sounds to communicate with each
other. Here again, sperm whales are ‘elephants of the sea.’
Sperm whales eat mainly cephalopods (squid), which they find at sometimes incredible
depths. Because she spends far more time below the surface than on it, one authority calls her a
‘surfacer’ rather than a ‘diver.’ But she has to breathe of course. Before a deep dive, she may
hyperventilate, taking sixty breaths or so in ten minutes (very fast for her). Her blood features
stupendous oxygen-carrying capacity, enabling her to stay down for as long as two hours without
surfacing. A dive of 500 meters is routine and she can go as deep as two kilometers or even
more.
She feeds in deepest darkness and crushing pressure from the water above. Though
classified as a predator of course, she has little of the classic hunter in her. With one or two
possible exceptions detailed below, she has no need for the adrenaline-fueled savagery of bears,
big cats, sea lions and the like for chasing and ripping up prey. Sperm whale stomachs often
contain large squid ingested whole with nary a mark on their bodies. It is thought that she simply
sucks her meals into her huge jaws or perhaps just opens her mouth so that they swim into it.
Some even think she stuns her prey with deafening bursts of sound. She gulps down maybe 600
squid daily, finding her prey by echolocation, like bats. Emitting loud clicks, she ‘sees’ other
creatures as well as sea floor contours from rippling wrinkles in the rebounding sound. Sound is
her only useful sense in the deep she prowls, except for her sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic
fields, useful for navigating long ocean journeys.
Because they spend so much time beneath the surface in open ocean far from land, we
know very little about sperm whales. Their first-ever underwater footage, taken in Sri Lankan
waters as it happens, came only in 1984. No one can confidently say what they are up to in their
frequent gatherings around the island. They engage in a repertoire of colorful behaviors: jaw
clapping, tail elevation, tail slapping, belly-ups, roll-overs, head raises and breaching—flinging
themselves largely out of the water. An intriguing possibility raised by Cinnamon group
ecotourism chief, Chitral Jayatilake, is that they may be flirting and be here mainly for that
reason.
Sperm whales are classically ‘dimorphic’ between the sexes, meaning that mature males
grow substantially larger than mature females. Males may measure twenty meters and weigh
fifty tons. As with other dimorphic mammals, mating opportunities accrue overwhelmingly to
alpha males who dominate their competitors in contests of strength and aggression. In what
marine mammal scientist Howard Martenstyn calls ‘harem formation,’ he keeps his weaker
competitors away from his eligible females. Those females may in turn compete for his attention
with some of the behaviors mentioned above. Again, it is possible that sperm whales congregate
around Sri Lanka for the explicit purpose of mating.

3. Male-on-male competition is of course one arena where sperm whale behavior is far from
docile. Many males exhibit injuries from fights with rivals. Feeling hunted is another scenario
that may bring out aggression. It is hardly surprising that whalemen stories selectively highlight
aggressive behavior. Sperm whales dislike being chased and will flee or turn ornery when
closely pressed. Almost certainly, there are sperm whales alive today with memories of being
hunted and of seeing slaughter of family and companions.
Humankind is of course by far the most devastating menace sperm whales ever have
faced. No other adversary could by itself have pushed them to the brink of extinction. Orcas, to
be sure, can seize juvenile or ailing sperm whales, so perhaps should be deemed more ‘apex’ as
predators. Fearsome as they are, however, orcas may not be even the second-most-horrifying
adversaries sperm whales have encountered in their day.
Old-time whalers told tales of sperm whales grappling in the writhing, sucking limbs of
what may have been colossal squid. Perhaps someone picked the wrong item for lunch? On
Animal Planet, I have seen human divers wrestling with giant squid: furiously fast, agile,
deceptive and aggressive with their clinging, squeezing arms and tentacles. It can hold you down
till you drown. Her colossal cousin, rivaling sperm whales in length, might pose serious danger,
though the reverse is also true. Hoare recounts one reported sighting of a sperm whale,
dangerously entangled, calmly chewing her way out through a massive squid. But the whales
may not win them all. Sperm whale lacerations memorialize wounds from the hooks in colossal
squid limbs. In Antarctic waters, three fourths of sperm whale diet may come from colossal
squid: one prey they really might need to rip up in order to eat. Whether colossals sometimes in
turn consume sperm whale is unknown since the squid rarely surface from their abyssal haunts to
have their stomachs examined. My guess is that both species dine on juveniles of the other.
More cryptic still, ‘sea serpents’ may be (or may have been) the sperm whale’s most
fearsome non-human foe. Though unconfirmed through physical remains, sea serpents—dozens
of meters in length, swimming sinuously, heads high above the waves—have been reported by
seagoers and seaside dwellers for centuries. Maybe these observers are mistaken, but they were
not all crazy or drunk (were they?). As for nonexistent physical remains, recall the adage:
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Hoare records multiple eyewitness reports of
such creatures coiled double and triple around huge sperm whales. It sounds like a squeezing
death, a la anaconda, perhaps joined with drowning. Is it conceivable that such ‘serpents’—with
whales as their main prey?—have gone extinct due to whaling or other human causes before
their existence could even be scientifically ascertained? As Shakespeare’s Hamlet (a Melville
favorite, by the way) would have it: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than
are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Mark Hager lives in Pelawatte with his family, consulting
on legal, writing and NGO problems.