A STRANGE GIANT OF THE OCEAN
Of all the strange animals which live in the sea the sperm whale is
certainly one of the most extraordinary; whenever I look at one I feel
like saying with the country boy who had just seen his first camel:
“There ain’t no such thing, b’gosh.”
[Illustration:
A sperm whale lying on the slip at Kyuquot, Vancouver Island. Note the
slender lower jaw and the small side fins.
]
Its head, which occupies one-third of the entire body, is rectangular in
shape, and contains an immense tank filled with liquid oil known as
“spermaceti.” It is only necessary to cut an opening in the “case,” as
this portion of the head is called, and with a bucket dip out ten or
fifteen barrels of oil.
Spermaceti congeals slightly when cooled and in appearance is much like
soft white paraffin. Beneath the oil-case is a great mass of cellular
tissue, called the “junk,” which also contains spermaceti although not
in a liquid condition. Spermaceti is used almost entirely for
lubricating fine pieces of machinery and its quality is very much
superior to the oil obtained from the blubber.
The use to the whale of the oil-case is largely a matter of conjecture.
My own belief is that it acts as a great reservoir and that the animal
draws upon it for nourishment during periods of food scarcity. Bears,
seals, and other animals store up on their bodies great quantities of
fat which enable them to live without food during hibernation, or the
breeding period, and the sperm whale is possibly a similar case; some
specimens are killed which are “dry,” and have practically no oil in
either the blubber or head.
Spermaceti should not be confused with “ambergris,” a substance of great
value in the manufacture of perfumes, which is obtained _only_ from the
sperm whale. Ambergris is due to a pathological condition of the
intestines and is never found in healthy whales. It is impossible to
tell just how the substance is formed, but the fact that it often
contains cuttlefish beaks leads to the supposition that it is in some
way connected with the squid and cuttlefish upon which the sperm whale
feeds.
[Illustration:
Stripping the blubber from the head of a sperm whale. Immediately
beneath the blubber of this portion is the oil-case. The blowhole
may be seen at the end of the snout.
]
If but a small amount of ambergris is produced it will often pass off
with the excreta and, since it is very light, may be found floating in
the water, but the entire intestines of dead whales have been known to
be clogged with the substance. It is exceedingly valuable, the black
ambergris being worth at the present time $12.50 an ounce, and the gray,
which is of superior quality, $20. As much as $60,000 worth has been
taken from the intestines of a single whale.
It is not itself used as an odor but as a _fixative_ in perfumes; that
is, to make the fragrance last. Many substitutes for ambergris have been
adopted in commercial work, but as yet none has been found which is as
effective as the original substance.
For hundreds of years ambergris has been known and used in various ways.
It was formerly supposed to have wonderful medicinal qualities (which,
however, are largely mythical) and in Asia was employed as a spice in
cooking. The Turks have long considered it of the greatest value, and
pilgrims who traveled to Mecca used to bring it as an offering.
Ambergris has a peculiar and not disagreeable odor which, when once
identified, will not easily be forgotten; after touching it traces of
the smell will still remain even though the hands have received several
washings.
During the last eight years at least fifty persons have brought to my
office for identification almost as many different substances which they
have found floating or washed up on the seacoast, and which they
devoutly prayed might prove to be ambergris. One man brought as a sample
a large piece of tallow from a barrelful which he had collected at
considerable trouble and expense; another had a portion of a jellyfish,
and a third carefully treasured a mass of dirty soap. But as yet no one
has brought “the real thing.” Ambergris is soluble in alcohol and this
is a good first test for those to whom the substance is unknown.
The sperm is by far the largest member of the toothed whale family and
has from eighteen to twenty-five massive teeth on each side of the lower
jaw; these fit into sockets in the upper jaw and assist in holding the
whale’s food. Upper teeth are also present but are in a rudimentary
condition and, except in rare cases, do not protrude into the sockets;
undoubtedly in ancient times the upper teeth were as well developed as
the lower but since they have not been needed they have gradually
atrophied and almost disappeared. Like the teeth of other animals, those
of the sperm whale are hollow in the basal half of their length for the
reception of nerves; in young whales this nerve cavity is wide and deep
but it almost closes with increasing age.
[Illustration:
“The sperm ... has from eighteen to twenty-five massive teeth on each
side of the lower jaw; these fit into sockets in the upper jaw and
assist in holding the whale’s food.”
]
Quite frequently the lower jaw of an immature animal will be injured and
as the whale grows its jaw becomes twisted like an enormous corkscrew.
The widespreading posterior part of the jaw is called the “panbone” and
from it the sailors make walking sticks, pie-markers, hairpins, and
carvings which are often beautifully executed. “Scrimshawing,” or
drawing upon whale’s teeth, also helps to while away many weary hours
when the ship lies still in a tropic calm.
[Illustration:
Cutting away the “junk” from the “case” of a sperm whale. The junk is
a mass of cellular tissue which also contains spermaceti.
]
The sperm whale is a lover of warm currents which favor the giant squid
and cuttlefish on which it lives, and although it has been taken as far
north as the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, even there it is in the
comparatively warm waters of the Japanese stream; it has also been
captured in the sub-Antarctic near the Falkland Islands.
The squid reach a length of twenty feet or more and the whale sometimes
has terrific battles with its huge prey, the tentacles of which, armed
with deadly suckers, tear long gashes in the skin of the head and snout,
leaving white scars crisscrossed in every direction. In Japan I took
several enormous spiny lobsters from the stomach of a sperm whale, as
well as the remains of a shark and seventy or eighty yellow parrot-like
beaks of the cuttlefish.
Unlike the whalebone whales, of which the opposite is true, the male
sperm is very much larger than the female, and an old bull will
sometimes reach a length of seventy feet and weigh eighty or ninety
tons. Such an animal is a truly colossal creature. The head of a
sixty-foot sperm, which was killed by Captain Fred Olsen in Japan
especially for the American Museum, was almost twenty feet in length,
and the skull, when crated, had a space measurement of twenty-six tons;
it was so large that it would barely pass through the main hatch of the
steamship which carried it to New York.
The sperm has only a single S-shaped blowhole situated almost at the end
of the snout on the left side, and its spout, which is like that of no
other whale, may be easily recognized even at a considerable distance;
the low, bushy, vapor column is directed diagonally forward and upward,
and the animal blows much oftener and more regularly than other large
cetaceans. A sperm may spout thirty or forty times when not disturbed,
generally lying still but occasionally swimming slowly during the entire
breathing period.
[Illustration:
An anterior view of a young male sperm whale. The head occupies
one-third the entire length of the animal and the lower jaw is much
shorter than the upper.
]
When a bull is wallowing at the surface, the “hump” (corresponding to
the dorsal fin of the fin whales) is first seen, and at regular
intervals, as the spout is ejected, the nose appears some forty feet
ahead. The length of time he stays at the surface, the number of spouts,
and the interval between them are all very regular and thus the hunters,
after a particular whale has been observed for a few minutes, know
exactly when the animal will again appear and how long it will remain
visible.
After its blowing has been finished, the head gradually sinks, the back
and “small” are curved upward, the flukes are lifted slowly high into
the air, and the whale goes straight down.
During the “big dive” the animal remains below from fifteen to forty
minutes and when reappearing, if not disturbed, swims tranquilly along
just below the surface at a rate of about three or four miles an hour.
His body is then horizontal, with the hump projecting above the water.
When frightened and speeding, a totally different attitude is assumed
and the great flukes are moved violently up and down; at each downward
stroke the head sinks eight or ten feet below the surface but rises with
the upward motion, presenting only the cutwater-like lower portion. The
upstroke of the tail appears to be the more powerful of the two, and at
the same time the broad upper half of the head is lifted above the
surface. A speed of ten or twelve miles an hour can be reached in this
way, which the whalers describe as “going head out.”
The sperm is very playful and like the humpback frequently “breaches,”
or throws itself out of water, shooting into the air at an angle of
about 45 degrees and falling back upon its side. It sometimes lobtails
also, pounding the water into spray with its flukes. When a sperm is
harpooned with a hand iron it often rolls over and over on the surface,
winding the line about its body and causing the hunters a deal of
trouble.
[Illustration:
The tongue of a sperm whale; it is strikingly different from the
enormous flabby tongue of the whalebone whales.
]
Along the Japanese coast during July the sperm whales sometimes appear
in enormous herds of four hundred or more; the great animals will lie at
the surface spouting continually and the sea for half a mile will be
alive with whales.
When the steam whalers find a school of this sort, signals are set to
bring in all the ships which may be near, and there is excitement enough
for everyone. The guns bang as often as they can be loaded and the
whales made fast, and the number killed is merely a question of how many
harpoons each ship carries, or the hours of daylight left when the herd
is found.
[Illustration:
The head of the sixty-foot sperm whale, the skeleton of which was sent
to the American Museum of Natural History, from Japan. The “case”
yielded 20 barrels of spermaceti.
]
The school will usually move very slowly, blowing and wallowing along at
the surface, and the animals in the center are heedless of the slaughter
on the outskirts of the herd. At times, however, the whales will
stampede at the first gun, and it then becomes a stern chase, which is
often a long one, before a ship can get fast.
At Aikawa, one day, a whale ship with a Japanese gunner raised a herd of
sperms a long way from the village. The man allowed his greed to get the
better of his judgment and killed _ten_ whales. He made them all fast to
the ship, which could barely move her load through the water, and it was
not until three days later that she arrived at the station. The whales
had all “blasted,” or decomposed, and were not as valuable commercially
as a single fresh one would have been.
The meat of this species is so dark and full of oil that it is of but
little use as food. Nevertheless, during the summer it is sold to the
native coal miners of Japan who live in such extreme poverty that they
are glad to get even such meat at two or three _sen_ per pound.
I shall not attempt to chronicle here the numerous authentic instances
of ships or boats which have been destroyed and sunk by sperm whales,
for they are the common property of every book on deep-sea whaling. They
leave no doubt that these animals often turn the tables on their hunters
and attack with savage ferocity and dire results.
Apparently the sperm is the only whale which will deliberately turn upon
its pursuers when not in its death flurry. Not only is its tail used
with terrible effectiveness in sweeping the surface of the water and
delivering smashing blows, but boats are often crushed like kindling
wood between its horrible jaws.
It would be interesting to know how long sperm whales live. The bull
which was killed in Japan for the American Museum showed unmistakable
evidences of great age. Its head was covered with white crisscrossed
scars, bearing testimony of terrific battles with giant squids in the
ocean depths, and the teeth of its lower jaw were worn almost flat,
projecting only an inch or two above the gum. The bones of its skeleton
were hard and rough, being covered with tubercles and bony growths.
[Illustration:
A posterior view of the head of the Museum’s sperm whale. The thick
covering of blubber which encircles the head is well shown.
]
All this indicated that the animal had lived for many years, but how
many it is impossible to tell. The condition of the skeleton shows
whether a whale is old or young, for in immature animals the bones of
the skull are separated (i. e., the sutures are open), the plates on the
end of the vertebræ (epiphyses) are free, and all the bones are soft and
spongy. Even though the whale may have reached adult size, which it
usually does in three or four years, the evidences of youth are still
present in the skeleton.
Reasoning by analogy (which is always unsafe), I have come to the
conclusion that a whale’s life is well within one hundred years, but I
must admit that my argument is mainly theory and that there are but few
facts with which it may be supported. Until recently, many naturalists
held the view that whales lived for hundreds of years and that they did
not reach adult size until long after birth. The latter contention has
been proved utterly wrong, but of the former we have little new
knowledge; neither do I see how we can ever estimate a whale’s age with
any degree of accuracy.