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SamtheCossack t1_j6f5pv0 wrote

The key word is "can". In theory. It has never happened, because although certain humans have decided that swimming right next to the largest predator that ever lived is a rational thing to do, no human has ever been killed by it.

... Because for some bizarre reason, whales like us. I am not sure exactly what we did to deserve this, but they don't do their high volume clicks when humans are in the area. They get away from humans before they resume clicking. Sperm Whales have killed a lot of people, but exclusively people that were hunting them at the time.

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No_Flounder_9859 t1_j6f95i3 wrote

Maybe they’ve accidentally killed fish nearby when they’re babies and their parents are like “see, what did I tell you?”

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CygnusX-1-2112b t1_j6frcll wrote

Alternate ending for finding Nemo. Neighborhood gets Sperm nuked.

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HalfAnP t1_j6g5blv wrote

> Sperm Nuked

The internet. It’s ruined me.

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RadarOReillyy t1_j6g8zu0 wrote

Yeah when I read that I had a visual that did NOT include any whales.

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scotty-doesnt_know t1_j6fon5i wrote

whales are significantly smarter than we dare claim them to be. If dolphins are self aware, you can be damn sure so are whales, even if it has hasnt been proven yet. They know who runs the oceans and the world. Back in the day if a human was injured or killed by an animal (thinking mostly types of sharks) we would kill every single type of that species in the area. Some times we were not even that specific and just went with any type of shark or w/e. Once we stopped hunting them (for the most part) they learned that if they left us alone we would leave them alone. They then learned if they helped us, we would help them. Whales are one of the very few wild animals that live by the "do unto others" idea. I would not doubt they even had their own whale jesus, and we were the ones that crucified him.

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chipkoandolan t1_j6gnv4g wrote

This is true. Fin whales, humpbacks, sperm whales and orcas have all been found to have spindle neurons, the cells in human brains that are responsible for empathy, social interaction and organisation and speech.

There are plenty of uncomfortable conversations that humans need to have with themselves, but this particular one ranks highly imo.

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Citizen_Kong t1_j6hodr7 wrote

Humans as a whole are a bunch of high functioning psychopaths, only restrained by a very thin veil of civilisation and morals.

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Soulgee t1_j6hr02i wrote

Not at all unsurprising for the world's apex predator.

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WilliamMorris420 t1_j6ghkbn wrote

Probably the biggest cause of death for Sperm Whales is getting hit by a boat and its propellers.

>Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus), currently listed as a vulnerable species, are severely impacted by ship strikes. Nearly 60% of sperm whales’ deaths are due to ship strikes in the Canary Islands.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.00379/full

The figures will vary by region but if a Sperm Whale doesn't get washed ashore. There's little way to know how it died or that it actually died. The other leading causes of death seem to be pollution, marine debris and malnutrition probably caused by us over fishing.

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jimb2 t1_j6hf6yp wrote

Self awareness and intelligence are a continuum, not a yes/no. We only think this because all the other hominid species along our evolutionary path are gone leaving a big gap.

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milddecay t1_j6glhhh wrote

Ugh, we still kill whales with shipping vessels, pollution and fishing lines.

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ghotiaroma t1_j6jbrjr wrote

> whales are significantly smarter than we dare claim them to be.

Interesting claim of how smart they are.

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W_O_M_B_A_T t1_j6fqk67 wrote

>The key word is "can". In theory. It has never happened, because although certain humans have decided that swimming right next to the largest predator that ever lived is a rational thing to do, no human has ever been killed by it.

Blue whales are technically predators although they eat krill and very small fish. Also extraordinarily loud. It's not known how blue whales generate such loud sounds without injuring or ar least deafening themselves.

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TheDeftEft t1_j6fazwc wrote

Clicking is obviously an advanced tactic, knowledge of how to produce such being a closely guarded secret.

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YuriBarashnikov t1_j6hwil5 wrote

maybe they see us as funny little pets and have their own version of reddit where they share photos of us

​

"Look at this funny little guy that swam next to me isnt he cute"

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25thNightSlayer t1_j6gmnxe wrote

The way you wrote this, an epic synopsis. I want to meet a whale one day to thank them for loving me.

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iiSpook t1_j6hpmi5 wrote

You got an approximate decibel value to make it easier to imagine?

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SamtheCossack t1_j6htcig wrote

Around 230, which is massively more than gunshots, jet engines, and even bomb explosions.

That said, decibels aren't really a good way of measuring sounds like that. It is a tightly focused long range sonar "Beam" that is used for scanning the ocean depths for prey, not a radial blast like the others mentioned. It is also in water, and compression effects in water are massively more dangerous, because the water doesn't compress like air is, so a human body gets hit by the full force.

So yeah, if a whale aimed it a human and did it at full force, it would kill the human. But they don't use it as a weapon, and the whale is very unlikely to do that. Especially since they seem to like people, and act curious and friendly to divers, and never hostile unless you spear them.

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iiSpook t1_j6hu4ul wrote

Oh, wow, I did indeed assume it was radial. So cool to hear they can actually precisely aim it. I do understand that you can't compare sound waves in water to air directly, I was just asking for a rough ballpark and you did deliver.

Follow-up question out if interest, if you allow. If I was next to one and they aimed the "beam" away from me, would I hear nothing or just a faint noise or something like that?

Thanks for your initial reply.

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SamtheCossack t1_j6hun5b wrote

If you were right next to it, I would assume it would be a very unpleasant experience. The force might be moving away from you, but the water won't stop moving once the sound goes through, and you would get a really nasty shockwave going through your body.

It would probably be a similar level of disorientation to being in a fairly high speed car crash.

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iiSpook t1_j6hv0sl wrote

Damn, that's so cool. Thanks, man.

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cranial_prolapse420 t1_j6ig6c7 wrote

Decibles are definitely used for measuring sound in a radius (or in this case, a free field). I'm curious to hear why you think it isn't a good way of measuring SPL, and which units you would use instead?

(I agree with everything else you said.)

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SamtheCossack t1_j6ih8j5 wrote

Mostly because it is in water.

Trying to compare decibels in air to decibels in water is not really a useful measurement of anything, since the nature of sound changes dramatically in different materials. Also, directed sound, like this, would only hit the peak amplitude in the exact center of the cone, and would drop off rapidly towards the edges, as opposed to a radial effect like an explosion, where it would be consistent across a wide front. This enables much higher amplitudes, but in an extremely small area, with a lot less energy overall.

So yeah, for a lot of reasons, saying gunshots are ~150 decibels, and Sperm Whales can hit 230 decibels is technically accurate, but not really what it sounds like. For instance, a pistol shrimp can hit ~220 decibels, but is almost completely harmless to anything bigger than a minnow, because it has such a short duration, and tiny scale.

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cranial_prolapse420 t1_j6im054 wrote

It's a unit of measurement used to express the ratio of one quantity to another. The medium has nothing to do with it.

To convert between dB in water and air, just subtract 26dB from the measured water SPL. This is necessary because sound measured in air uses a reference level of 20upa @ 1m, water has a reference level of 1upa @ 1m.

I'd also argue whale vocalizations are likely omnidirection, since it's a method of communication and would be pretty ineffective if you had to aim it across an ocean and hope someone happened to be on the receiving end.

Still wondering which unit you'd prefer to use?

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SamtheCossack t1_j6imhpy wrote

The 230 dB vocalizations are not for communication, they are for locating prey in the deep ocean. They are directed down, and used to locate the optimal location for the whales next dive. Communication clicks are considerably less energetic (Though still powerful).

I am not saying decibels aren't the right measurement, I am saying comparing the two on a 1 to 1 basis doesn't paint a useful picture of what is happening.

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cranial_prolapse420 t1_j6iv5os wrote

Fair enough, sorry to be a pendantic jackass. It's morning where I'm at; coffee had not yet occured.

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Zarmazarma t1_j6j26qh wrote

> Around 230, which is massively more than gunshots, jet engines, and even bomb explosions.

The conversion factor for sound intensity between air and water is approximately 62 decibels. This means a 230 decibel sound underwater is comparable to a 168 decibel sound above water. This is similar to a variety of gunshots going off about a meter from your ear (incidentally, also about the range you fire a gun from).

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