Why are sperm whales all covered in scars? Can giant squids really give them a decent fight? (10 photos)

People find whales with giant scars, the diameter of which is no less than 20 cm! The animal really got them in a fight with its prey. But there are nuances in the story that will moderate the ardor of the hero-narrator.





*epic music plays*



Unfortunately, humanity has not yet been able to film a single scene of squid hunting. Therefore, sperm whales can lie whatever they want!

Let's start with the absolute truth: an epic fight between a mammal and a mollusk is guaranteed to take place in complete darkness. In search of cephalopods, sperm whales descend to a depth of up to 2 kilometers. Only sometimes, at night, squids rise to depths of 500-600 meters.





Darkness is the friend of youth. Let's leave these two alone...

To navigate in pitch darkness, mollusks have grown the largest eyes among animals - the diameter of their eyeball reaches 25 cm! Such eyepieces catch the slightest glimmer of light. Sperm whales, however, have taken a different approach: they rely on echolocation. Instead of relying on rare glimmers of light, mammals see everything around them in 3D.



By the way, squids see perfectly well at such a depth. All thanks to their huge eyes.

The scars on the whale's skin are indeed left by the giant squid. The pimples on the mollusk's tentacles are capable of pressing against prey with a force of about 8 atmospheres. As if that weren't enough, each sucker is framed along the edge by a chitinous ring with teeth. If dozens of such devices are pressed into the human body, he will die from bleeding in a matter of minutes. Most often, prey no larger than a person gets caught in the tentacles of squids: deep-sea fish and other squids, including giant ones, are almost immediately torn apart in the tentacles.



Traces of a desperate struggle are on the left. The tool for leaving traces is on the right.

Does this mean that whales can die in search of prey? Not quite. For a sperm whale, even such a deadly weapon is almost not dangerous. The average thickness of human skin is 1-2 millimeters, while that of a sperm whale is 20 times thicker. And under the skin there is also a layer of fat up to 50 centimeters thick. There are practically no blood vessels in it, so even extremely deep injuries are treated with little bloodshed.



Even such claws will not leave deep wounds on the sperm whale. They will only slightly scratch the skin.



I am sure that many people are surprised that the suckers of squids are stuffed with sharp spikes.

And the difference in size is colossal: The average weight of an adult whale is 40 tons, and a large giant squid will hardly weigh 200 kilos. There is also an interesting overlap with the size of the scars. People really do meet whales with giant scars 20 cm in diameter. At the same time, the suckers of the largest squid caught were 2 times smaller. And this with a body length of 17 meters! Are there really monsters almost 40 meters long hiding in the depths?



You can easily find photos of monstrous squids on the Internet. But they are all either Photoshop or the tricks of neural networks.



Here is a real photo of a giant squid. The monster is truly impressive, but they rarely grow more than 10 meters! Giant squids remain very easy prey for an adult sperm whale.

But here, too, the solution turned out to be quite simple. Young sperm whales that have not yet finished growing also hunt giant squids. And their scars grow with them. Considering that even 15-ton "kids" can defeat the monstrous mollusks, the scars on them can really double in size as the entire organism grows.

So it is unlikely that even one whale has died from its own prey. However, we can't be 100% sure. After all, a sperm whale that died in a fight will never surface again...

There is still a chance that even larger squids live in the dark depths of the ocean!



But you won't be able to tell anyone about it...