Sperm whale

Where does the sperm whale live?

Home: Deep oceans worldwide.

In the wild you find it in: Portugal, United States, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Dominica, Norway.

Conservation status from the IUCN: vulnerable.

The short profile

Fully grown it measures Males up to 16 m long. It weighs about 40 000 kilograms. On the menu: meat.

The story behind it

Sperm whales dive to depths of over 2,000 metres in search of giant and colossal squid, holding their breath for up to 90 minutes on a single dive thanks to enormous oxygen-storing muscles and blood. They navigate and hunt in total darkness using echolocation, producing the loudest sounds of any animal through a huge organ in their head called the spermaceti organ, which also gives the whale its name and its distinctively block-shaped head. Sperm whales live in tight family groups led by females, called pods, while adult males often roam alone or in smaller groups, only joining females to breed. Deep scars on their skin, often from battles with giant squid, are common. Historical whaling for the oil in their heads devastated populations, and though hunting has stopped, the species remains vulnerable.

Find it on the globe

Sperm whale is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.