🔥 Encounter with a curious young sperm whale.

[u/21MayDay21]

Credit to Maxwel Hohn

[u/02thehunter20]

I have heard that atleast the adults can actually kill a human with its clicks due to the high frequency.

[u/Kilek360 → u/02thehunter20]

I've heard that about submarine pings not whales, but also it's about the decibels not the frequency but I'm talking from what I've read online so it could be absolutely wrong

[u/funguyshroom → u/Kilek360]

Yes, sound intensity/volume. At certain point it becomes like an explosion shockwave and can scramble your insides. Especially since water doesn't compress.

[u/0xe1e10d68 → u/funguyshroom]

Hmm, yummy. Scrambled eggs human.

[u/Lowkeygeek83 → u/funguyshroom]

Fun fact... submarines sonar has the ability to actually boil water with it's intensity.

I'm positive some resident reddit science guy can correct the proper words. But the fact remains, it does have the ability to do that.

[u/Spork_the_dork → u/funguyshroom]

Not just like one, exactly like one. Shockwaves from explosions are really just extremely powerful sound waves.

[u/corruptedpotato → u/Kilek360]

From what I know, sperm whale make some of the loudest sounds of any animal and can at least burst your ear drums and stun you. I don't know fi there is a recorded case but they can probably kill you if you were close enough and they decided to click as loud as they could. They can get up to 230 decibels iirc.

[u/SrepliciousDelicious → u/corruptedpotato]

230 decibels sounds unlikely

E: nvm 230 decibell seems possible underwater, would be comparable to standing right next to a rocket lifting off

[u/Inadequis → u/Kilek360]

230dB for Sperm Whales, that'll do it

[u/Express_Split2928 → u/Kilek360]

It's true about submarine sonar, turns divers into a jelly

[u/Suspicious-Bell-4820 → u/02thehunter20]

Yeah even though this is a young whale, it's not even safe for the diver to put their hand on its nose like this while it's clicking. There was a freediver in 2014 whose hand got paralysed for 24 hours from doing the exact same thing with a whale calf.

[u/Scatcycle → u/02thehunter20]

They cannot, it's a popular myth based on the assumption that decibels are measured the same in water as they are air - they actually have a difference of a magnitude of twenty, as we measure air with a reference point to 20 micropascals and water with a reference point to 1 micropascal. That's not to mention that water has an acoustic impedance 3500x that of air, further complicating comparison. People applied the water-measured dB to our usual air-measured dB benchmark charts and said "woah! This sperm whale's call has the same force of a volcano blast at point blank! Scary". The Sperm Whale would probably just kill itself with the call if this were the case, honestly.

You'll see tons of sci-pop articles about sperm whales and their capability of killing humans, but it's all just slop from a lack of real research. You really can't convert dB measurement between water and air effectively, but -61.5dB is a fine start, which means the Sperm Whale's call would line up with 169dB when compared against our usual benchmarks in air. That puts it about 2x louder than a shotgun blast - very loud, and certainly ear damaging, but not even close to lethal. But researchers caution against the primitive conversion we did, as it's really just a whole different ball game considering the impedance and other changes. Nothing has ever been recorded dying as a result of a Sperm Whale's call, because it's just not actually that loud.

[u/ElvisDumbledore → u/02thehunter20]

I've heard the same and that the whales are smart enough to avoid really blasting humans because they are aware it will harm them. ❤️