This video is sponsored by Surfshark. Squidbeak. Squidbeak.
Huge squid beak. Very rare deep sea shark. Some other fish in that.
Huh? There it is. I can't let the others see it.
It's mine. All mine. I think they know.
I think he found the spice. The spice. The spice.
Starting with the flukes. After 16 long months on the inside, all 13 ft and 1,000 kilos of you is gradually squeezed out into the can be pretty much anywhere in the ocean really, but not the cold bits. Oh no, you're drowning.
And you're too weak to get to the surface. That's better. Right now, you're the most popular you're ever going to be with everyone wanting to say hi and help support you to breathe.
But to be able to do it yourself, you're going to need some food. Mom's milk has a very high fat content of 30 to 50% compared to a cow's at around 4% giving it a thick cottage cheese-like consistency and keeping it intact in water. Huh?
What's going on? There's panic amongst the pod. Looks like some other species want a piece of you as well.
The pod moves into formation, making a wagon wheel with you at the center, where the outward facing tails can deliver a concussion to anyone thinking you're an easy target. It's a high pressure situation, but you have thick skin up to 14 in to be exact. That wrinkles up unlike the smooth skin of most whales.
Good. Their intelligence means they know when to give up. Your family will always be there to protect you.
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So, go check it out after the video. Right, back to eating. Wait, where's mom going?
No, don't go. You're hungry. Oh, what's this?
You're part of a pod made up of several natural lines to a total of 12 whales that help each other out, allowing you all to balance parenthood with hitting your daily macros. Your pod's part of a wider clan of potentially over a thousand whales connected by your distinct identity coders, complex, short, rhythmic sequences of clicks used for communication in social interactions. For example, it might be how mom finds her way back after an hour and a half.
And how who goes next is decided. After a few days, you're able to breathe on your own by breaking the surface with your S-shaped blow hole placed asymmetrically on the front left side of your head. The next year is spent living and traveling with the pod, staying close to the surface as they take turns babysitting you.
What's this? That's nice. Well, given you're a bit bigger now, maybe it's time to make some small dies to get some more.
Okay, that's enough. Scary. It's a start, though.
And as you grow in size and confidence, you gradually keep pushing the limits, but still heavily relying on mom's milk. Oh my gosh, your first word. Everyone in the pod is so excited.
After two years, you've picked up your first sound from the pod. your first step in learning the unique dialect shared by your clan. Over the next few years, you continue to expand your vocabulary whilst putting on the kilos as you move on to more solid food, eventually weaning off the milk at around 3 and 1/2 years old, though some will go for longer.
This doesn't mean you're independent yet, but it does mean in 16 months you'll lose access to the full attention of mom. Not to worry, though, as Grandma and the rest of the pod will chip in to support you. Although she's years past her childbearing days, she still plays a very important role.
Helping raise others calves, sharing decades of wisdom, and leading the pod. To make up for your large size and complicated social structure, growth is relatively slow. But at around 10 years old, there's a turning point.
You're around 29 ft. And up to this point, a male would have only been slightly larger than a female, though a female would have just about reached maturity. As a female, you'd then stay with the pod, have a kid, help raise them and the others, and have a healthy social life.
But we've covered all that in your childhood. So, let's make you a male. You're about to make a drastic change, something males do between the ages of around 4 and 20.
You say your final goodbyes to the family you've spent your whole life with and head out into the world alone. You are now an independent sperm whale. You've probably been wondering where you get the name from.
Well, back in the 18th century, humans loved a different barrel of oil, a liquid found in a massive barrel-shaped organ of yours. This one in your head. Originally thought to store what the name suggests, leading to the name spermiceti organ cuz that's apparently the first assumption when people find a mysterious organ full of fluid.
Though people now know the name isn't quite accurate, the actual function is still up for debate. One possibility is by letting cold water in through your blow hole, you're able to cool the liquid permaceti, causing it to solidify, increasing the density and helping you sink during dives. During the hunt, you produce heat to melt it, reversing the effect.
Though there are some issues with this, like you not having the anatomical structures for the heat exchange and the effect being negligible until the organ reaches a massive size. It would also probably affect something that's vital for you at the moment. Now that you're 10, you're making full depth dives down to typically between 1 and 12 to 4,000 ft with over 7,000 ft possible.
Your ribs connect to your spine by a flexible cartilage allowing them to compress under the high pressure instead of snapping. Your heart rate slows and the high concentrations of myoglobin in your muscles and hemoglobin in your blood store your oxygen supply whilst your lungs are out of commission prioritizing flow to the most important organs. No sunlight can reach down here leading to complete darkness.
But that doesn't mean you're blind. By circling air through your nasal passages and forcing it through your phonic lips, specialized nasal structures at the front of your head, you produce clicks that fire through your spermiceti organ, reflect off your frontal sack and through your junk. Again, not that kind of junk.
This organ got its name as it was considered worthless compared to the valuable oil up top, but not to you, as it focuses the sound as a directional beam out into the darkness. Your asymmetrical skull allows you to distinguish reflections of this beam from all directions going through your lower jaw to your inner ear. Now, if your spermaceti solidified, clicks might not travel through it properly, which means you might not have found that tasty squid over there.
As you home in on the prey, your echoes ramp up, giving you the clearest picture right before you slurp them a hole. You spend anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes down here, typically catching something every few minutes or so before heading back up to the surface. But not too fast.
Don't want any nasty compression sickness. That feels nice. Now to have 10 minutes rest before you go back down.
Sup, bro? Sup? You uh you just left your pod?
Yeah. Yeah, just left. Just dive alone.
Cool. Cool. Want to join our bachelor pod?
Sure. So, that alone thing wasn't quite 100% accurate. It's nice to have some company from individuals in a similar situation.
After meeting all the boys and a few more DS, you're ready to turn in for the night. You take up a vertical position just beneath the surface, then nod off for a whopping 10 to 15 minutes. Spending less than 10% of your day in these short power naps ranks you as one of the least sleepdependent animals around.
You have the largest brain of any animal to have ever lived and potentially sleep half of it at a time, though some observations suggest full. Your 2 cm thick eyelids do shut only cuz a muscle can retract your eye further into its socket. You can't roll them around though.
For the next decade, you continue the routine of diving and resting, eating around 1,000 kilos of mainly squid a day and gradually traveling to higher and higher latitudes with the Bachelor Boys. Though technically a mature adult at around 20, you're still several decades away from reaching your full size and still have to hang around a bit longer till you can become a real man. You are now an adult sperm whale.
At just shy of 30 years old, you're clocking in at around 45 ft long, with a third of that being down to the largest head in the animal kingdom, making you the largest tooththed whale around. You're solo again and heading back to warmer tropical waters to fulfill your evolutionary responsibilities. Here's a group.
The intricacies of the whole mating process are not definitively determined. For example, you may have had to headbutt a few of the boys before you could even put yourself forward. though it's thought that when you do it comes down to female choice.
Looks like you've got two takers. Don't worry, there's plenty of you to go around. After you've served your purpose, no one cares about you anymore, so you head back towards the poles, meeting up with the boys on the way.
You have 18 to 26 10in and 1 kg teeth on each side of your lower jaw, which fit nicely into the sockets on your upper jaw, where there are teeth, but they rarely want to come out. Ultimately, they aren't that necessary for most prey you slip up, but they do work as a nice rake for the bottom dwellers, and they probably come in handy for what you've just found. There's a slight risk with these as they can fight back.
But being up to 45 ft long means the reward is well worth it. As the loudest animal on Earth, you can produce clicks at nearly double what's required to burst a human eardrum, which is theorized to stun or disorientate prey, although not confirmed. But you'll take anything that could help as you home in and successfully turn the giant squid's tentacles into spaghetti.
After swallowing the remaining chunks whole, they make their way to the first section of your four-chambered stomach, which is basically a trash compactor as you don't chew. The remaining chambers finish digesting all the good bits, leaving behind some foreign objects like stones and a collection of several thousand hard, sharp squid beaks that you cher up when you're back at the surface. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 H.
You seem to be missing one. When squid beaks get stuck in your intestinal tract, you produce a substance to help protect against the sharp bits called amberree. After a few years of growing, it's either vomited up or passes through the other end.
To a certain species, it's known as floating gold, and it's a very valuable rare substance typically used in high-end perfumes. Now, in your 30s, you've grown even more. So, after leaving the breeding areas for the year, you decide it's about time to leave the bachelor pods behind and actually face the world alone.
You don't want to be the weird old one trying to hang on to your youth. As you get towards the Antarctic waters, you feel a combination of excitement and nervousness for your next dive. Giant squid may be the longest prey you eat, but round these parts are the largest by mass.
Once you're under, using your echoes, you want to get as close as you can before the largest eyes in the animal kingdom spot you. Weighing up to 500 kilos, possibly more, the Colossus Squid is in your sights. But it seems you're also in theirs.
What follows is a legendary battle of epic proportions, fought by two deep sea giants, leaving you with a few nasty scars and then begging R2 to switch it off. As you come back up to breathe, you play your vital role in the ocean's ecosystem by fertilizing the surface with nutrients you require down under. Right, time for a nap.
One of many more to come. Bet you thought you were dead. Nope, it missed you.
You actually go on to live a full healthy life, reaching your max size of around 55 ft and 45 tons in your 50s. Then living on to your 60s where you eventually pass away due to natural causes only to wash up on a nearby beach where your body can be contributed to scientific research to help preserve your species for the future. The end.
The spice. The spice. My precious.
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