📸 PhotoA mother sperm whale and her calf off the coast of Mauritius. The calf has remoras attached to its body.
Photo: Gabriel Barathieu · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons Source
Sperm Whale
Physeter macrocephalus (Sperm Whale · マッコウクジラ)
💡 Everyday Comparisons for Size, Mass & Speed
- 📏 Length 18m — ~1.5× the length of a 12 m coach bus
- 🏢 Height 3.5m — ~2× the height of a 1.75 m human
- ⚖️ Mass 45t — Equivalent to ~45 compact cars (~1 t each)
- ⚡ Speed 37km/h — ~1× Usain Bolt's 100 m world-record average speed (37.6 km/h)
Reference standards: coach bus ~12 m, mid-size car ~4.9 m, compact car ~1 t, basketball hoop 3.05 m, credit card 8.56 cm.
Site-computed relative index from recorded values; not a formal scientific metric.
📖 1. Overview
It is the largest of all toothed animals (toothed whales) and a master deep diver that plunges into pitch-black waters 2,250 m deep for 90 minutes to hunt giant squid.
🌐 Wikipedia Summary ExtractThe sperm whale or cachalot is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the genus Physeter and one of three extant species in the sperm whale superfamily Physeteroidea, along with the pygmy sperm whale and dwarf sperm whale of the genus Kogia.
🦴 2. Anatomy & Morphology
It has the largest brain of any living creature on Earth (weighing about 8 kg), regulates buoyancy by adjusting the temperature of the spermaceti organ inside its huge block-shaped head, and emits 230-decibel sonar clicks.
🔍 3. Ecology & Behavior
It is the real-life model for the novel 'Moby-Dick' and has a mysterious sleeping habit in which pods sleep vertically suspended underwater.
🇰🇷 4. Connection to Korea
It is a large toothed whale with reported migration records in the deep waters off Pohang and Ulleungdo in the East Sea.
📚 Sources & References
- • Wikipedia “Sperm whale”
- • Wikidata Q81214
- • IUCN Red List category VU — latest assessment at iucnredlist.org
- • species.nibr.go.kr — mainHome.do
- • fisheries.noaa.gov — sperm-whale
- • Silhouette: PhyloPic — author not recorded · Public Domain Mark 1.0
Recorded dimensions are widely cited representative estimates from public literature and may vary by study or specimen.