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Published online 21 February 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.613
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Researchers sneak up on sleeping whales
Sperm whales found fast asleep at sea.
An accidental encounter with a pod of sleeping sperm whales has opened researchers’ eyes to some unknown sleep behaviours of these giant sea creatures. Counter to previous assumptions, and unlike smaller cetaceans, the whales seem to enter a period of full sleep.
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"Although the whales are not aggressive towards humans, a slap from a startled dorsal fin would be devastating." Given the size of a sperm whale's dorsal fin, I'm not sure I would describe a slap from one as 'devastating'. Stewart
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of Luke Rendell's film of the Sperm Whale Sleep Movie, and your reporter Matt Kaplan is to be commended for bringing this to your readers. I plan to use the movie teaching students at Wake Forest University with reference to Dr. Rendell's and Matt Kaplan's publication in your Journal. Side by side with my films of Dolphins Sleeping in a similar manner, Rendell's film is even more impressive and important. Dr. Rendell and I are both presenting good evidence that toothed whales have the ability to sleep both halves of their brain at the same time, in addition to having half brain sleep reported frequently in the literature. The Sperm Whale Sleep movie by Luke Rendell, University of St. Andrews is very valuable, and it confirms for Sperm Whales the same behavior I have reported for Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus): (1) McCormick, JG. Relationship of sleep, respiration, and anesthesia in the porpoise. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 1969, vol. 62, pp. 697-703. (2) McCormick, JG. (Photographs Included) Behavioral Observations of Sleep and Anesthesia in the Dolphin: Implications for Bispectral Index Monitoring of Unihemispheric Effects in Dolphins. Anesthesia and Analgesia, January 2007, vol. 104, No. 1, pp. 239-241. Movies of my work were shown on television in the 1970s and 1980s by Time Life Films as part of a larger movie "After the Whale". My publications also document multiple sleep modes for small Cetacea discussed for Sperm Whales by Kaplan. My colleague Dr. Sam H. Ridgway has published electrophysiological evidence for the bi-hemispheric behavioral sleep observations I made for Tursiops truncatus in his paper: Asymmetry and symmetry in brain waves from dolphin left and right hemispheres: some observations after anesthesia, during quiescent hanging behavior, and during visual obstruction. Brain, Behav. Evol. 60, 265-274. Dr. Ridgway tells me that sleep behavior like that in Luke Rendell's Sperm Whale movie was also reported by Gray in 1927: The sleep of whales. Nature, 119, 636. (Posted by the editor on behalf of James G. McCormick, Ph.D.)