Mammals · plate 26 of 60
Sperm Whale
Physeter macrocephalus
Biggest brain on the planet. Uses it to find squid.
Only 0.3% of people are Sperm Whales. (estimated)
If you're a Sperm Whale
You think slowly, dive deep and surface with something nobody else could have found. Sperm whales have the largest brain of any animal, hold their breath for over an hour and travel the world's oceans in family groups that mind each other's young; you are family-minded, far-ranging and comfortable with long silences. Very long silences.
A sperm whale's click is the loudest sound made by any animal, and it uses a head full of waxy oil, a third of its body length, to focus it.
The Sperm Whale as a spirit animal
Matching a Sperm Whale says you go deeper than anyone around you and come up with the goods, eventually. You are loyal to a small group for life and patient past the point of reason. The flaw is pace: you do things in hours when others want minutes, and you are only impressive if someone waits for you to surface. They should. Whalers spent two centuries learning that lesson.
Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.
How to get along with a Sperm Whale
Do
- Give them time to surface before expecting an answer.
- Keep the group small and the loyalty long; they are built for both.
- Ask about the deep stuff; it is where they actually live.
Don't
- Don't fill their silences for them.
- Don't try to hurry a dive. It ends when it ends.
When it goes wrong: A Sperm Whale under pressure goes silent and goes down, sometimes for a long time; don't follow, keep the surface calm and be visibly there when they come back up.
The Sperm Whale in a relationship
You love for life and in a family, more than in a pair. Female sperm whales stay in their mother's group for decades, and the males visit; whichever role you take, you are devoted to the group and slow to add anyone to it. Once added, nobody leaves.
Field notes
Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works
- Sociability
- 7
- Boldness
- 5
- Energy
- 2
- Curiosity
- 5
- Devotion
- 9
- Roaming
- 10
- Sperm whales dive deeper than two kilometers and can stay down for more than an hour hunting squid.
- Families of related females live together for life and take turns babysitting calves at the surface while the others dive.
- Different sperm whale clans use different patterns of clicks, and whales keep company with clan-mates who share their dialect.
Sperm Whales in literature
- Moby Dick — Moby-Dick, Herman Melville (1851)
- Mocha Dick — Mocha Dick: or The White Whale of the Pacific, Jeremiah N. Reynolds (1839)
- The Whale — Just So Stories (How the Whale Got His Throat), Rudyard Kipling (1902)
Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.
Closest personalities
The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Sperm Whale's. If you got Sperm Whale, one of these was probably your runner-up.
Other mammals
WolfRed FoxBrown BearPolar BearLionTigerLeopardCheetahElephantGiraffeHippopotamusGorillaOrangutanSlothKoalaKangarooPlatypusOtterBeaverBadgerRaccoonHedgehogBatCamelDolphin
Among the 60
Friedrich Specht (1839–1909), Brehms Tierleben, Alfred Brehm (1893). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits
