Sperm Whale

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Sperm Whale
Species:	Physeter macrocephalus
Category:	Dolphins and Whales
Length:	59ft (18m)
Appearance:	A massive, grey whale with a square head and a sharp set of conical teeth.
Location: (EO)	Deep Valley Abyss
Location: (EO2)	Zahhab Region Zahhab Region Depths
Time:	Day and night (EO) Night only (EO2)
Dangerous:
Forms:	Adult only Young (EO2 cutscene)

The Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) is a large species of toothed whale found in Endless Ocean and Endless Ocean 2.

It is a solid gray whale, with sharp, cone-shaped teeth in its lower jaw that fit neatly into slots in the upper. Perhaps its most recognizable feature is its large, squared-off snout.

In-Game

Marine Encyclopedia

Endless Ocean

Description

“These massive mammals have square heads with long lower jaws and a bumpy dorsal fin. They can be seen diving in the depths of the Abyss year-round.

Although they don’t have teeth on their upper jaws, they have cone-shaped ones on their lower jaws. However, the squids and other creatures the whales feed on are usually eaten whole. The teeth are mainly used for fights between males and for bringing food to hungry calves.

Females take good care of their young, but when they dive in search of food, the calves remain close to the surface. To prevent anything from happening to them, females in the pod take turns diving so some can stay and protect the young. If a predator attacks, the calf retreats to the center of the group. This posture is known as the marguerite formation because of the way it resembles the marguerite chrysanthemum.”

Endless Ocean 2

Description

"Its square head takes up almost one third of its body length and there are rows of large conical teeth in its lower jaw. The teeth in its upper jaw never erupt. As it eats its prey, usually squid, whole it needs no teeth to feed.

Their teeth may instead be used for fighting between males or bringing food back to calves."

[Maternal Care]

"Calves live with their mothers, but they cannot dive as far, so when the mother goes down to find food, the calf stays at the surface. Females and calves live together in pods and females stagger their dives so that calves are not left alone and exposed to danger.

If an orca or other predator targets a calf, the females will close ranks and surround the calf to protect it.

This is sometimes called the 'marguerite formation' after the flower it resembles."

Endless Ocean

Deep Valley

Katherine: "That's a sperm whale! Good gravy, that thing is huge! I wonder how far down this crack goes."

Abyss

Katherine: "Hey, you remember that sperm whale we saw on top of the crack? This isn't very scientific buuuuut... you wanna know what I think? I think he's a guard. I feel like he's watching over the place."

Location

Endless Ocean

One can be seen in the Abyss year-round, both during the day and at night. In spring and fall, they can be seen emerging from the Abyss to patrol the Deep Valley area.

Particularly, in spring at night, two sperm whales can be seen emerging from Deep Valley, occasionally crossing paths with a nearby humpback whale. The two patrol the area for a short period before eventually returning to the Abyss. Due to a glitch with the whales' routes, however, they both go off-course and spiral downwards - one after the other - with one even phasing directly through the aforementioned humpback whale.

Endless Ocean 2

One can be seen circling around the Zahhab Region's Open Sea, taking the place of the legendary creature found there by day. Another one is found over the Twin Crevasses at night. If it is the player's first time over the Crevasses at night, then a short cutscene will occur and show the whale emerging from the depths.

When the player first enters the depths during the main story, they encounter one in the Northern Crevasse and must lure it to scare away a giant squid. Afterwards the sperm whale can either be seen battling the Giant Squid, or swimming separately from it.

In addition, during the final part of the "Help Me" quest, five specimens are seen in the western Zahhab Region about to beach themselves, and must be pulsed before they do so.

Behavior

They swim slowly along their route, as is typical of other whales. They respond well to the sea whistle, which is used to unlock its trivia in Endless Ocean 2.

Gallery

The battle between the sperm whale and giant squid, as seen in-game.

A sperm whale in Endless Ocean, entering Deep Valley.

Notes

• This is one of Jean-Eric's favorite creatures, though it only counts as such once the player has seen the cutscene with them swimming into the Twin Crevasses.
• The marguerite formation mentioned in this whale's description is shown as a scene in Endless Ocean 2 while the player is swimming with Hayako Sakurai. This marks the only instance where young sperm whales appear in the game, and the player is unable to interact with them.
  • It also makes the sperm whale the only species in the game to have its young appear but not be interactable.
• Sperm whales are the only large species of whale in Endless Ocean 2 that can be regularly found on more than one map; they are seen both in the Zahhab Region and in the Zahhab Region Depths.

Real-Life Information

• A group of sperm whales, including a newborn calf.

1/1

• The marguerite formation spoken of in both in-game descriptions and shown in a cutscene in Blue World is something that occurs in real life. It is sometimes called the rosette or wagon wheel formation.
• Sperm whales are largely unchallenged, only ever preyed upon by humans and orcas, and possibly sharks. Pilot whales and false killer whales are also thought to hunt them, but only on occasion. The most common target is juvenile sperm whales - adults, especially adult males, are too large and ferocious to make sense for pursuit.
• True to their in-game description, sperm whales themselves prefer a diet of mostly giant squid. Also true to their in-game description, they only ever have teeth in the lower jaw, and these teeth are not used for chewing; instead, they are simply used to trap prey, and sometimes in fights.
  • The consumption of giant squid by sperm whales is what scientists believe to be the cause of ambergris buildup. Ambergris is a waxy substance produced in the intestines of sperm whales around indigestible objects, like squid beaks.
    • Lumps of ambergris can be found as salvage items in Endless Ocean 2.
  • In pursuit of food, sperm whales will stay underwater anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, up to two hours. They are some of the deepest divers in the animal kindgom, going down as much as 8200 feet (2500 meters) in order to search for the larger cephalopods that tend to stay there.
• The notes about the behavior of mother sperm whales in relation to their diving habits when protecting calves is accurate. Sperm whales are overall social animals, but it is more often the females and calves that form pods - groups of mothers and young are not uncommon.
• The name "sperm whale" comes from spermaceti, a substance located in the head of the sperm whale that was used in the days of whaling to create products such as cosmetics, ointments, and candles. It is not known precisely what this substance is used for, nor the organ that produces it, but current hypotheses include buoyancy control, sound amplification and reception, and ramming.
  • The presence of the spermaceti organ is part of what is responsible for their unusually-large head. True to their in-game description in Endless Ocean 2, the head can be up to one-third of their entire body length.
• While blue whales are largely considered the loudest creatures on the planet, this is based primarily on a combination of duration and volume. When considering volume alone, the sperm whale far outclasses the blue - blue whale calls reach 188 decibels, whereas sperm whale navigation clicks reach a whopping 230. The sperm whale is not often considered, however, because these clicks are so incredibly short, lasting only about 100μs (microseconds, or one-millionth of a second).
  • While the volume of a sperm whale's click is dampened to roughly 174 decibels when heard underwater, due to the fact that sound travels differently through water, that's still enough to burst a human's eardrums - it only takes about 165 decibels to do that.
  • For comparison: flash-bang grenades only go up to somewhere between 170-190 decibels, and 210 decibels would be enough to cause damage to the internal organs. Somewhere between 185-200 decibels is where death might occur if someone were standing too close to the source of a loud sound - it could cause great damage in the lungs, even potentially making them outright explode due to the changes in air pressure.
    • With all of this taken into account, it should be no surprise that it is also thought that the whales sometimes use "intense bursts of sound" to stun potential targets.
  • Sperm whales also communicate through sound - each whale has a unique set of clicks, called a "coda", that they are thought to utilize when socializing in order to identify each other.
• Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales. They display something called sexual dimorphism, wherein the different sexes of an animal display different visual characteristics - males are anywhere from 30 to 50 percent larger than the females.
• There is another species of toothed whale that shares a name with the sperm whale, the pygmy sperm whale. True to its name, it resembles a much smaller sperm whale, though is in a different family -  Kogiidae, as opposed to the sperm whale's Physeteridae.

Navigation

Dolphins and Whales

Bottlenose Dolphin • Pacific White-Sided Dolphin • Short-Beaked Common Dolphin
Commerson's Dolphin • Orca • Risso's Dolphin • Beluga • False Killer Whale • Narwhal
Spectacled Porpoise • Amazon River Dolphin • Southern Bottlenose Whale • Humpback Whale
North Atlantic Right Whale • Pygmy Sperm Whale • Antarctic Minke Whale • Gray Whale
Sperm Whale • Blue Whale