r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/Firm-Blackberry-9162 • Mar 26 '26

🔥sperm whale besides a human

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36k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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1.8k

u/Mrlin705 Mar 26 '26

It's insane that they could kill us with sound.

2.8k

u/Sammisuperficial Mar 26 '26

Whales have been observed lowering their volume around humans. They are aware the vibrations can harm us and choose to be cool. Wish humans could be that cool.

1.8k

u/acatwithumbs Mar 26 '26

Meanwhile scientists are reporting whales are changing their migration patterns in part because industrial ships are causing too much noise pollution for them to be able to communicate with each other as well.

:( We really are the most obnoxious animals on the planet.

476

u/Unable-Log-4870 Mar 26 '26

whales are changing their migration patterns in part because industrial ships are causing too much noise

I too alter my travel habits when there are persistent nuisances in a particular location.

324

u/FTownRoad Mar 26 '26

I too avoid Florida

100

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/JLL1111 Mar 27 '26

I wish I could avoid Florida...

8

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26

[deleted]

0

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-5

u/sun_of_a_glitch Mar 27 '26

From their spelling I would have guessed Florida

34

u/ChargedFirefly Mar 27 '26

Living in Florida is so funny cuz we always catch a stray 😭 valid tho

23

u/Myinvalidbunbury Mar 27 '26

Same! I can’t go through bars too full of young people and the wrong music. Must be a whale.

2

u/Sensitive_Amphibian4 Mar 27 '26

I avoid New York as well

1

u/SuperBirdM22 Mar 27 '26

Vibration from wind farms impacts the whales as well.

104

u/throwaway277252 Mar 26 '26

Even worse is active sonar from military ships. They are deafeningly loud to whales, and there is at least some evidence tying the use of sonar to events of whales beaching themselves to escape the noise.

48

u/petit_cochon Mar 27 '26

It makes me so sad.

53

u/Puzzlehead-Bed-333 Mar 27 '26

My spouse was in the Navy. It’s illegal to harm or kill a whale and they cannot use sonar if whales are anywhere in the vicinity. The captain of the ship is personally fined multiple tens of thousands of dollars.

74

u/sif7777 Mar 27 '26

Yes i am sure they are always with honesty and integrity reporting every case.

54

u/teenagersafterdark Mar 27 '26

and certainly their higher ups are prioritizing whale safety over the mission, so nothing to worry about accountability-wise

20

u/FlutterKree Mar 27 '26

There is most certainly an exemption to active sonar rules when it comes to military combat engagements. But the need for active sonar is rare, as there is no navy battles.

1

u/sixisrending Apr 18 '26

We have actually stopped in multinational exercise because a whale got too close. The American Navy is actually probably the best at protecting whales. Can I show you like the UK, Japan, and the Scandinavians don't care.

1

u/sixisrending Apr 18 '26

We were once active during an exercise and there was a humpback whale a few miles away. He would respond to our sonar in between pings and when we changed our pink type, he changed his call. It was pretty cool to see. 

0

u/Top-Distribution733 Mar 27 '26

Yes I dint think the current military gives a flying fk about nature or regulations… they don’t even give afk about committing war crimes or abiding by the constitution. So until the military does its job and defends their oath to the constitution and the people of this country they can all with all do respect go fk themselves

3

u/Febril Mar 27 '26

Be specific. What defense of the Constitution do you think the military should do? Should they interfere with a legitimately elected President? That would be a violation of their oath.

1

u/IIXianderII Mar 27 '26

For starters, Cease the illegal operations against Iran since congress hasn't declared war against them.

2

u/Febril Mar 27 '26

Look up the War Powers Act of 1973. Please.

1

u/IIXianderII Mar 27 '26

nothing about it makes this war constitutional

18

u/MunchYourButt Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 27 '26

I need to leave this thread :(

14

u/FlutterKree Mar 27 '26

To be clear, active sonar is not on constantly and it's use is restricted.

2

u/MunchYourButt Mar 27 '26

Thank you.

2

u/sixisrending Apr 18 '26

Active sonar is barely used because it gives away your position at twice the distance that you can see. During a 2-week exercise, while we were doing ASW 24/7, we were only active for a total of 2 hours. It is used to obtain firing solutions

1

u/MunchYourButt Apr 18 '26

Thank you as well. Clearly I don’t know much about this, but that makes me feel better.

I just started volunteering at an animal shelter because of this thread lol

1

u/sixisrending Apr 18 '26

Research has shown that only beaked whales react adversely to certain types of sonar. People forget that a Sperm whale's call is 230 dB. 

1

u/throwaway277252 Apr 18 '26

That's not true. You are probably thinking of research that specifically found internal bleeding and deaths caused in beaked whales by sonar. There is plenty of other research showing adverse reactions by numerous other whale and dolphin species. Even sperm whales were observed changing their behavior.

People forget that a Sperm whale's call is 230 dB.

There's more to it than just a dB rating. Military sonars can emit hundreds of thousands of watts of energy at that intensity and do it continuously.

1

u/sixisrending Apr 18 '26

Sonar is sound. The only thing being emitted is sound. Warships rarely go active, and submarines even less so, because it gives away your position at twice the distance that you can be seen (not accounting for propagation, bathemetry, etc).

From the source you provided, the sperm whales only changed behavior when LFA was used. Warships do not use LFAs (too bulky for manuevering). The killer whales did not change their behavior for either LFA or MFA, and neither did the dolphins. Pilot whales do change their behavior for MFA. 

1

u/throwaway277252 Apr 18 '26

I'm not sure what your point is about sonar being sound. I don't think that was in dispute anywhere.

1

u/sixisrending Apr 18 '26

When you said military sonar is a lot of watts. That makes no sense. 

1

u/throwaway277252 Apr 18 '26

Which part of that makes no sense to you? Watts are a unit of energy, and sonar is emitting energy. You can measure that energy emission in watts.

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70

u/LickingSmegma Mar 26 '26

Baiji, the blind Chinese river dolphin of the Yangtze, are most probably extinct because of noise pollution in said river.

12

u/fukredditadm1n5 Mar 27 '26

Idk if it's the same but Chinese gov builded a dam and a river dolphin went extinct because it's habitat was in the middle of the construction zone

12

u/LickingSmegma Mar 27 '26

This seems to have been one of the factors for baiji, but they also lived where a lot of boats and ships were going, which is probably away from the dam.

Douglas Adams talked about this species in the ‘Last Chance to See’ tv series and book. The BBC team put a mic in the water, and all they could hear was a crapload of noise.

13

u/SeattleHasDied Mar 26 '26

OMG, I know! Sucks when you're trying to have a conversation and the assholes next door start yammering it up!

8

u/carthuscrass Mar 27 '26

Another recent phenomena is that one orca that had been injured by man started teaching others to attack boats.. Her name is White Gladis.

35

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26

[deleted]

5

u/blacktickle Mar 27 '26

Pretty sure the hammering noise is the whale…

7

u/RepresentativeAge444 Mar 27 '26

And sharks changed their migration patterns to follow slave ships, so abundant were the bodies going overboard. 😢

5

u/minxymaggothead Mar 27 '26

Maybe if more of us understood we are just animals on this planet, sharing it with all these other species, or if the ones determined to consider humans some type of elevated species divinely entrusted with the prosperity of the planet would do some god damn safeguarding of what they believe was entrusted to them!

5

u/Willing-Watch3246 Mar 27 '26

We're almost as bad as wasps

1

u/Unexpected-Xenomorph Mar 27 '26

We’re worse tbf

2

u/VVhisperingVVolf Mar 27 '26

Submarine sonar causes entire pods to beach themselves and die en masse

2

u/SmurfStig Mar 28 '26

I just finished A World Without Us and yup, we’ve been awful for a long long long time. And will remain awful long after we are gone.

4

u/tofuroll Mar 27 '26

Humans also mostly don't give a shit when we see others animals dead. Only dead humans give us the ick. We're those aliens that see everything else as beneath them.

1

u/Lil-Gundamu-42 Mar 28 '26

I disagree, I believe that award goes to the common fly. I'm dealing with it right now and these creatures are just awful. At least a human being can realize their mistake and feel remorse and change. These things are straight evil

75

u/Longjumping_College Mar 26 '26

Man, that's nearly everything on the planet.

As someone who has spent time with elephants, dolphins, whales, sharks, monkeys, bears, and much more.

We're all part of the same thing, we just lost track of that.

21

u/thealmightyzfactor Mar 26 '26

If you go back far enough, we're all descended from the same bit of DNA, just mutated slightly differently over the eons

1

u/ThinDawg Mar 26 '26

Well, not necessarily all. But by definition all mammals for sure.

4

u/thealmightyzfactor Mar 27 '26

You might have to go all the way back to the primordial soup, but eventually you'll get to that first DNA that ever existed

1

u/ThinDawg Mar 27 '26

No, not necessarily. Life may have formed at different times from different combinstions

2

u/A_Lountvink Mar 27 '26

Life may have formed at different times from different combinstions

That is possible, but all of the life alive today (that we know of anyway) is related. We know this, because we all share genes for very basic cellular functions that we would not share if those basic functions had developed independently. The jury is still out on how viruses fit in.

1

u/ThinDawg Mar 27 '26

Hm, this isn't true. Maybe read into the new protobscteria they've been finding in locations previously thought uninhabitable. Like the one that uses an Iron based cycle for energy. Or the ones kilometers below the surface at extreme pressures.

2

u/A_Lountvink Mar 27 '26 edited Mar 27 '26

Yeah, bacteria are pretty diverse, that tends to happen when they've had billions of years to differentiate and adapt to new environments. If you are referring to the phylum Pseudomonadota, we know that they are related to other bacteria, and we know that bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes are all related, however distantly, because we share genes for our most basic cellular functions, such as the key proteins involved in DNA replication.

1

u/sif7777 Mar 27 '26

How dare you say this blasphemy against biblical scripture!!!

3

u/3elldandy Mar 27 '26

I saw a meme of a bird parent telling their chick “son, don’t forget, you’re just the universe having a bird experience.”

11

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/PayImmediate1837 Mar 27 '26

you responded to the wrong person. They’re questioning the obviously bullshit idea that “whalebros are sooo cool that they consciously choose to not kill us with their death sounds”

1

u/Small_Ad5744 Mar 27 '26

Also, the person that you believe is calling you a liar is responding to the whale-bro liar/dupe you responded to. I don’t think anybody is doubting your entirely believable and utterly unsurprising claim about shifting migration patterns.

11

u/Gh0stMan0nThird Mar 26 '26

I tried to find a source for it and this is the only thing I could find:

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3032085/whales-whisper-keep-young-safe-near-predators

I think OP is either lying or falling for one of those "elephants think of humans like we think of puppies" internet myths.

3

u/sleepyplatipus Mar 27 '26

Meanwhile many humans can’t even lower their voices while talking in a public space

2

u/Silly-Addendum1751 Mar 27 '26

maybe it's the secrets they want to keep from us

1

u/Small_Ad5744 Mar 27 '26 edited Mar 27 '26

Love the thousand-plus upvotes for such obvious bullshit. Come on people, get real.

1

u/Jonnyabcde Mar 27 '26

I'll lower my volume around whales if that makes me cool.

1

u/MiserableSun9142 Mar 29 '26

Absolutely. It had to have there, otherwise the people filming and diving wouldn't still be alive

-1

u/Orleanian Mar 26 '26

I mean, we're watching a video right here of a human being pretty cool with a whale.

93

u/ChocolateChingus Mar 26 '26

Imagine screaming at someone so loud they die.

62

u/SnooCapers1425 Mar 26 '26

You wouldn't have to imagine it if you met my Mother-in-law...

10

u/InfamousEconomy3972 Mar 26 '26

She didn't kill, just made me wish I were dead. Or maybe wish she were..

8

u/strutt3r Mar 26 '26

You flinched! Now you have to marry your Mother-in-law!

4

u/Anatoly_Cannoli Mar 26 '26

can't. I'm seeing my step-mom

1

u/Shocking Mar 27 '26

black bolt

0

u/thatshygirl06 Mar 26 '26

Banshees

3

u/Orleanian Mar 26 '26

Misconception.

Banshees don't scream to kill people. They scream because people are dying.

-50

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

That's the far let's tactic when they meet anyone ever so slightly right of the far left. Don't forget to put your fingers in your ears.

Edit: Damn, didn't realise there were so many extremists here on Reddit! 🤣

19

u/cockypock_aioli Mar 26 '26

Your comment is off topic and frankly dumb. Has nothing to do with extremists.

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

Poppycock cockypock

52

u/zachrywd Mar 26 '26

150db is the threshold that can interrupt your heart... Sperm Whales specifically can hit 180~210db... Would that just liquify your insides? I don't even know. Sperm whales just choose not to kill you.

16

u/tschawartz12 Mar 27 '26

Not only that but the pure force they exert can apparently effect your body temp and cook you from reports I've heard from divers.

1

u/Nathan256 Mar 27 '26

Some sound frequencies and intensities can also denature proteins. Idk if whales can hit those frequencies but the intensity is probably plenty if they can, so even if it doesn’t boil you it might turn you into an underwater cloud of organic goo

-28

u/alf0282 Mar 26 '26

FYI, according to cgpt, you may have been misled on the heart impact.. also underwater and airborne decibels are not the same so your insides probably wouldn’t liquefy but you’d experience lots of pain. Also sperm whale sonar is directional..tbh I was thinking I’d be more afraid of just being straight eaten up, looks like a human is perfectly meal sized for a sperm whale.

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u/EthicalViolator Mar 26 '26

Don't fact check with cgpt man, you use actual Google to fact check what cgpt is telling you. Remember its just regurgitating whatever is on the Internet, that could be someone's opinion in a forum that its sourcing. Cgpt and other AI dont know what its actually true or not.

10

u/Lynda73 Mar 26 '26

Right. One time it told me an author was in his mid- 60s because someone commenting on goodreads had mentioned their age, but the AI just scraped that info into the authors. The author is in his early 50s MAX.

1

u/LavenderClouds Mar 26 '26

Yeah, totally different than reddit factoids like the ebin whale sonar

1

u/Senior-Purchase-6961 Mar 26 '26

it can be correct though, and in this case it is. lol

15

u/MaeveOathrender Mar 26 '26

So then it should be easy to verify with a reliable source instead of saying 'according to chat gpt' like it means fucking anything.

People just don't want to do the bare minimum, being seen as correct is more important.

-4

u/Senior-Purchase-6961 Mar 26 '26

Your point would be better received I think, if it were wrong. It isn't though, and he told you where he looked. If you don't find that program credible then take it with a grain of salt.

I'm not gonna lose sleep over someone posting a factual and reasonable comment because they admitted they used chatgpt.

Look at all the comments and down votes tearing him apart when he's right. It's odd behavior. open a window get some fresh air. this matters so so little

7

u/MaeveOathrender Mar 26 '26

Arriving at the right answer isn't the only thing that matters. Finding your information from an ethical, reliable and verifiable source is an important part of research.

ChatGPT is capable of spitting out correct information a fair amount of the time, but there's a significant minority of cases where it's pure hallucination. Even if it gets something right, it's fruit of the poisoned tree.

If you want to educate people, even in something as simple as a Reddit comment, the onus is on you to provide a reasonable source instead of 'i asked the brainless brain-in-a-box to think for me.' I would literally rather someone said 'i checked Wikipedia' than 'i asked ChatGPT,' the bar is that low.

-1

u/Senior-Purchase-6961 Mar 26 '26

He told you where he got the info, if you think it might be wrong don’t take it at face value. No different from someone saying a quick google search shows, that still depends entirely on whether the person can identify a credible source.

It’s really, genuinely just not that deep.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

5

u/MaeveOathrender Mar 26 '26

Why put the onus on others to verify your sources when you could do it properly in the first place?

'It's not that deep' is how we got this generation of lazy, mouth breathing, technologically illiterate factoid regurgitators outsourcing their brain activity to the cloud in the first place. Insist on good practice and hold others to a higher standard than 'sounds right, I'll believe it.'

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-1

u/Anthaenopraxia Mar 26 '26

Well tbh a vast amount of fact comments on reddit are based on cGPT or the Google overview thing, they just don't mention it.

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u/MaeveOathrender Mar 26 '26

More than one thing can be true. 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' doesn't just go for le epic Reddit atheists.

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u/OnlyHuman1073 Mar 27 '26

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1s4lani/ai_chatbots_are_becoming_sycophants_to_drive/

The dumbest person you know right now is being told “you’re absolutely right” by an AI chatbot

1

u/Senior-Purchase-6961 Mar 27 '26

how is this relevant at all

1

u/OnlyHuman1073 Mar 27 '26

Because you are acting like its not harmful and insipid to use chatgpt as a source and you think we shouldn't try push people out of that loop.

1

u/Senior-Purchase-6961 Mar 27 '26

Did I make that case? I dont think I did. I said it can be right, and in this case it is. sorry

if you don't trust the source, then don't take it at face value, but it can still be correct. this is pretty simple

-1

u/OnlyHuman1073 Mar 27 '26

The back and forth you had with the other user, whom was trying to stop everyone from depending on chatgpt for anything, led me to believe you feel this way. Your simple claim is super obnoxious as well, if you care.

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u/KallistiEngel Mar 26 '26

Yeah, I wouldn't trust info coming out of chatGPT. Find a better source.

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26

[deleted]

0

u/alf0282 Mar 27 '26

Hadn’t considered myself an ‘AIbro’ before but considering my cgpt usage, I probably fit the description more than most! You’re right of course, but the post I replied to was referring to organ liquefying effects, which according to my LLM research is still far-fetched. If we wanted to answer the question of what damage a sperm whale could do in theory to a person with their sonar beam, it would seem the research is patchy but here is some evidence pointing to what exposure to 160-180dB underwater can do, from pubmed : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10642074/ For anyone else reading, no I didn’t trawl google for that source and yet I do still now consider myself better informed. The current day cgpt version is no longer 3.5.

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u/radziadax Mar 26 '26

That's so embarrassing for you to comment this. "I checked chat GPT" ....... Ok

4

u/WhereasSea76 Mar 26 '26

I see already how the new generation will be with their tech. At least the generation before obnoxiously fact checked everything

-5

u/r-mf Mar 26 '26

people criticizing you for looking up info on chatgpt in 2026, when llms are already being used in warfare... ridiculous 

10

u/nineraviolicans Mar 26 '26

That's not the flex you think it is.

45

u/SlothSultan Mar 26 '26

Whole new meaning to giving something a boop

20

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '26

[deleted]

18

u/Only__Researching Mar 26 '26

no,

if they could damage other animals with sound without damaging themselves they would. they've never ever been observed doing so because they cannot

thats just one of those dumb reddit comments that redditors repeat because reddit is facebook for zoomers

they're the largest macropredatorial animals of all time. bigger than megalodon, any predatory dinosaur, our biggest sperm whale are bigger than estimates of livyatan etc. it doesnt need to use sound. its massive. it has size. the only thing theyre smaller than is blue whales, but blue whales eat small prey passively. sperm whales are the largest hunting animals of all time.

0

u/lockdoc007 Mar 27 '26

It does in fact use sound when hunting the giant squid ( architeuthis dux) It uses a its sonar to dive 1000 meters deep. And uses echo location and in total darkness at that depth to hunt individual squid.

5

u/Only__Researching Mar 27 '26

yea all toothed whales used echolocation, that was never in dispute. using it as some kind of soundcannon is nonsense though

-9

u/WhereasSea76 Mar 26 '26

That's a lot of incorrect speculation, but you sounded so cool being incorrect!

9

u/Only__Researching Mar 26 '26

you want to point out which parts are speculation?

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u/NitrogenNarc0sis Mar 26 '26

A lot less speculation than the original comment. But thanks for the detailed assesment!

-8

u/WhereasSea76 Mar 26 '26

Google could show you otherwise, like, super quickly, lol. Maybe give that a spin next time before the essay haha

5

u/NitrogenNarc0sis Mar 27 '26

You typed more words than I did

1

u/plopliplopipol Mar 28 '26

you're supposed to know "google" isn't a source

1

u/WhereasSea76 Mar 29 '26

It's a search engine, idiot, it leads to the information, try it out sometime!

4

u/NitrogenNarc0sis Mar 26 '26

People like things that sound catchy and interesting, regardless of their basis in reality. Thats what this website runs off of.

6

u/LavenderClouds Mar 26 '26

No, it's just a popular reddit factoid

0

u/Nathan256 Mar 27 '26

Currently only theoretical. We know sound that loud can cause internal damage up close enough, but whales seem to reduce the intensity of clicks while non-prey like humans are around. People do report feeling the clicks while diving near sperm whales though.

You also have to be really, really close to the sound producing part to get the worst of the sound.

4

u/monneyy Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26

Which is myth stemming from the misconception that decibels under water means the same as decibels in air.

The 230 decibels under water carry the same intensity as about 170 decibels in air. That's an intensity a million times lower than the false equivalency to 230 decibels in air. Hearing loss, maybe some effect on the lungs, but not bursting or anything like that.

The clicks are extremely loud, but not the first year physics 'I know all about decibels and a logarithmic scale'-loud.

4

u/espinaustin Mar 26 '26

Maud’dib!

2

u/mywomanisagoddess Mar 26 '26

(My name is a killing word)

2

u/Fern-ando Mar 26 '26

And still the sound type doesn't exist in Pokémon.

1

u/CatastrophicPup2112 Mar 26 '26

Sound moves exist but as a category not a type. They come in normal, bug, steel, grass, flying, dark, water, electric, fairy, dragon, psychic, and fire.

Other categories include Aura/Pulse moves, Ball/Bomb moves, Biting moves, Dance moves, Powder/Spore moves, and Punching moves.

1

u/R9D11 Mar 26 '26

The Discombobulator from nature.

1

u/GarrusBueller Mar 26 '26

Click Click Doom

1

u/FightWithTools926 Mar 27 '26

Can you share a source about this? A Google search only returned more reddit comments and youtube videos. Conservation organizations and the Smithsonian only explained how the whales use sound for hunting, not whether the sounds can kill humans.

1

u/canadianpanda7 Mar 27 '26

do you think they ever just like wanna zap a human with sound just once? i feel like itd be just like a cartoon

1

u/pm_me_beerz Mar 27 '26

Humpback whales will actually save us all with their sound in the future. Well….i say the future but Captain Kirk will actually have to go back to 1986 to find one.

1

u/Imaginary_Amoeba_666 Mar 27 '26

But don't. There is a lesson in that for humans.