Better literally than figuratively. I figuratively hate being killed.

So you'd prefer to actually be killed, than be 'killed' metaphorically?

Yeah but it's still not as bad as spending a year dead for tax reasons.

If the threat comes from a poet, I’d have it either way.

But will it kill me softly?

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.

With his words

Sperm whale just living life.

It won't kill you at all. Because whales are bros, and won't do it when you are nearby. They will do it near microphones and such, but they won't do it with human swimmers in the water.

That said, they do a lot of lower volume clicks. Which are still powerful enough to cause serious medical problems. Which has happened.

His clicks!!! Didn't you watch the vid!

Maiming you soooftlyyyy

With his songs, telling my whole life with his clicksssss

A long time ago I learned that this claim was made by 1 whale biologist and his photographer buddy, and is completely unsubstantiated 🙄 Edit : drunk typing

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

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

I wish I could do that. I know a lot of people who need a good clicking.

The energy is enough to do it, and water transfers well. It is possible, but it isn't likely to happen even if whales didn't deliberately avoid doing it near us.

Now if a whale wanted to do it, it totally could. Several whale species do it to prey species, and a Sperm Whale has more than enough potential to make it happen. But they use it for detecting food in the very deep ocean prior to making their deep dives, they don't really have any interest in using it to flex on humans.

Yeah technically it's possible in ideal(or non ideal depending on perspective)circumstances, but it doesn't happen in the real world. Plus, like futurama says, never trust a whale biologist 😂

Don’t double click on it

Pretty much, yeah. Very unlikely to happen, and not a real risk. I mean until you meet that one whale that thinks it is funny.

😂 I suppose if it did happen, there'd be no one alive to relay the account of it 🤔

Wish I was a whale. I would learn the Brown Note and all you puny humans (within distance) would be screwed.

The US Navy actually uses technology that imitates this on some ships.

Best movie ever, yes.

>never trust a whale biologist

"The sea was angry that day, my friends - like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli." - Whale Biologist

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.

I thought snapping shrimp made the loudest sound, far louder then that of a whale.

>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.

Alternate ending for finding Nemo. Neighborhood gets Sperm nuked.

Have you ever heard the click of a disapproving mother/ MIL?

They can kill you as well

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Take my whale ass to sea world so I can click out "Do you believe in life after love" to all you mfs

My tired ass read this as their dicks can kill you...

That's how I wanna go

r/ unethicallifeprotips

> Sperm Nuked

The internet. It’s ruined me.

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

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vvvmudbuttvvv vvvmudbuttvvv

Whale... fish...whatever

So they're basically Thunderdrums

https://howtotrainyourdragon.fandom.com/wiki/Thunderdrum

Don’t kill the pink monkeys either.

Also true?

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.

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

you are correct. but it is a big diff from hunting them directly.

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

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.

Fish… Mammal… Whatever.

It's feasible to measure the decibels. Since water is denser than air, it can support louder noises, and from there they can run calculations as to what that level of energy would do.

If it hasn't been proven in 2023 it ain't true.

Par for the course with this sub

Spermageddon

clicking furiously in Khoisan

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.

This sounds very Douglas Adams

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

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

And they can dive and hold their breath for 2 hours or more.

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

Lol dummies said that in 1823 too

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.

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.

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.

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

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"

r/keming is supremely disappointed.

I wish I could speak whale.

The Mariah Carey of the oceans

The Sperminator!

It is hard to take a claim seriously when the same person also claims sperm whales can hear each other over 1000+ miles which is just not true, sperm whales max out at like 40 miles.

I tried to find where this claim first comes from with no luck.

It does seem to be based on the fact that a sperm whale click can be well above 200dB and that 185+dB is considered dangerous to humans. The problem seems to be though that whoever made the original claim didn't know that dB in water and dB in air are not the same. In air a sperm whales clicks would be in the 170's, still going to burst your eardrums but probably isn't going to kill you.

Welp, there went 25 minutes to Sbassbear.

Much like watching an action scene on Netflix

25 minutes well spent.

Nemo 2: Bukkake Boogaloo

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.)

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.

Just imagine how loud it farts

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?

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.

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

Gonna say it's bullshit. Supermarket whales specifically were highly hunted. Something would be documented. Sounds like complete bullshit.

Sounds like a pretty metal way to go.

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

Interesting claim of how smart they are.

The Tulkun ain't taking it no more.

Making a splash in a theatre near you!