How do Sperm Whales catch Giant Squid?

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Субтитры (13)

0:00How do sperm whales catch giant squid? The rest of the ocean’s behemoths fill their bellies by

0:05filter-feeding on tons of easy-to-find swarms of calorie-dense krill. But the sperm whale has

0:10to meet its enormous calorie needs by actively hunting down huge numbers of squid of all sizes.

0:15Which seems tough, because squid are agile prey with huge eyes and predator-deterring ink sacs.

0:21For a while, it was hypothesized that sperm whales used their built-in sonars to send out

0:25incredibly powerful sound waves to stun the squid before they gobbled them up.

0:28But it turns out that the squid don't notice sonar waves at all, which is actually a good thing

0:33for the whale, because the sonar’s echolocation feature allows a sperm whale to travel deep into

0:37the darkest reaches of the ocean and find its prey unnoticed. Then - at the last second of approach

0:42- it rolls its body and swishes its tongue - causing a whirlpool that sucks the nearby squid

0:47into its mouth before they can react. When the squid is especially big - like architeuthis, the

0:52so-called giant squid, which can weigh up to a ton - it can sometimes try to fight back. But by the

0:58time it knows what’s going on, it’s already in the whale’s mouth, so the whale almost always wins.