Animal
Sperm whale
The sperm whale has a giant square head. It dives very deep into the dark sea to find squid.
The sperm whale is the biggest whale with teeth. Its huge, boxy head is about a third of its body, it dives deep into the dark ocean to hunt squid, and it makes the loudest sounds of any animal.
Physeter macrocephalus is the largest toothed whale and one of the deepest-diving mammals. It locates prey in the dark with powerful clicks, lives in long-lasting family units of related females, and is still recovering from two centuries of commercial whaling; the IUCN lists it as Vulnerable.
Photo: Gabriel Barathieu, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Meet the sperm whale
The sperm whale is a very big whale.
It has a huge head shaped like a box. It has teeth in its long, thin bottom jaw. It is dark gray, with wrinkly skin.
The sperm whale is the largest of the toothed whales. A grown male can be about 16 meters long, longer than a school bus, and its enormous square head makes up about one third of its body.
Unlike blue whales and humpbacks, which strain tiny food through baleen, sperm whales have real teeth: 20 to 26 large ones on each side of the narrow lower jaw. Their skin is dark gray and often wrinkled behind the head.
Physeter macrocephalus is the largest of the odontocetes (toothed whales). NOAA gives adult lengths of about 40 feet for females and 52 feet for males (roughly 12 to 16 meters); Britannica records males up to about 24 meters at the extreme. The head accounts for about a third of the body length.
The narrow lower jaw carries 20 to 26 large conical teeth per side, while upper teeth rarely erupt. Sperm whales are the only living cetaceans with a single blowhole set asymmetrically on the left side of the head. Their family, Physeteridae, split from other toothed whales very early; sperm whales much like today's lived about 20 million years ago.
Quick facts
- Group
- Mammal
- Length
- 12 to 16 m
- Weight
- 13,600 to 40,800 kg
- Top speed
- up to 37 km/h
- Lifespan in the wild
- up to 60 years
Where it lives
Sperm whales live in all the big oceans.
Mothers and babies stay in warm water. Big males swim far away to colder water.
Sperm whales live in all of the world's oceans, usually far from shore where the water is very deep. They go wherever their food is.
Females and young whales stay in warm tropical and temperate seas all year. As males grow up, they swim farther toward the cold polar waters, and the biggest males often travel alone. They come back to warm water to find mates.
NOAA describes sperm whales as inhabiting all of the world's oceans, with distribution set by food and breeding conditions and differing by sex and age. Females and young remain in tropical and warm temperate waters year-round, while maturing males range progressively toward higher latitudes.
Their migrations are less predictable than those of baleen whales. NOAA notes that the sperm whale's feeding range is probably the largest of any species on Earth, which may make it more resilient to climate change than animals with narrow habitat needs. The map shades whole ocean regions; sperm whales favor deep water rather than every part of each ocean.
Its habitat
Where can you find this animal?
- Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Deep waters of all the world's major oceans. Females and young stay in tropical and warm temperate seas; adult males travel toward polar waters.
Places: Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean and Southern Ocean.
Source: NOAA Fisheries · checked October 2026
Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Counts of GBIF records of wild observations (human and machine) and preserved specimens. Records include introduced populations, vagrants, escaped or released animals and misidentifications, so a country with records is not necessarily part of the native range.
Wild sightings have been recorded in Portugal, United States, Fr. Southern Lands, France, Chile, Canada, Antarctica, Spain and 98 more places.
Source: gbif · checked October 2026
Range maps show where scientists say an animal lives, often country by country. An animal may live in only part of a country shown, and sightings records can include animals that wandered far from home.
Hunting in the deep
Sperm whales eat mostly squid.
They dive down into the dark, deep sea to find them. Some of the squid are giant squid!
Sperm whales are carnivores that hunt mostly squid, including the giant squid, along with fish, sharks and skates that live in deep water. NOAA estimates that a sperm whale eats about 3 to 3.5 percent of its body weight every day.
To find food they make deep dives, often to around 600 meters and sometimes much deeper, lasting 45 minutes to an hour. Then they rest at the surface for several minutes, breathing hard, before diving again.
The diet is dominated by cephalopods, especially deep-water squid including Architeuthis, the giant squid, supplemented by fish, sharks and skates. Daily intake is about 3 to 3.5 percent of body weight.
Dive figures vary by source and region. NOAA reports routine foraging dives to about 2,000 feet (610 meters) lasting about 45 minutes; Britannica gives common depths of about 350 meters, with whales found tangled in cables more than 1,000 meters down and dives of an hour or more. Between dives a whale may rest at the surface for about 10 minutes, breathing roughly every 10 seconds. Some sperm whales have learned to shake fish off longline hooks, a behavior called depredation.
A head full of sound
A sperm whale finds food with sound.
It makes loud clicks. The clicks bounce back. Its big head helps it dive and make sounds.
In the deep sea it is completely dark, so sperm whales find their prey with echolocation. They make clicking sounds, and the echoes that bounce back tell them where squid are. Their clicks are the loudest sounds made by any animal.
The giant head holds the spermaceti organ, filled with a waxy oil. Scientists think it helps focus the clicks and may help with diving. Sperm whale muscles store lots of oxygen, and their flexible chest lets the lungs squeeze flat under the huge pressure of the deep.
Clicks are generated by forcing air through vibrating tissue in the nasal passages, then channeled forward through the head. Britannica gives frequencies of about 5 to 150 kilohertz and source levels up to about 230 decibels, the loudest sounds produced by any animal. Echoes are received through the lower jaw and conducted to the inner ear.
The function of the spermaceti organ is still debated: proposed roles include focusing sound, regulating buoyancy, acting as a hydrostatic organ and absorbing nitrogen. Diving adaptations are better understood: high concentrations of myoglobin store oxygen in the muscles, and an elastic chest lets the lungs compress at depth without tearing.
Growing up
A baby sperm whale is called a calf.
It grows inside its mother for more than a year. When it is born, it is already about as long as a car!
A mother sperm whale is pregnant for 14 to 16 months. Her single calf is about 4 meters long at birth, about as long as a car. Calves start eating some solid food before they are a year old, but they keep drinking milk for several years.
Females have a calf only once every five to seven years, so populations grow back slowly. Females are fully grown at about 30. Males keep growing until well into their thirties and are physically mature at about 50.
Females reach sexual maturity at about 9 years and 9 meters long, then calve roughly every five to seven years after a gestation of 14 to 16 months; the newborn is about 4 meters (13 feet) long. Calves take some solid food within the first year but continue to nurse for several years.
Growth differs sharply by sex. Females reach full size, up to about 11 meters, around age 30. Males grow for much longer, reaching physical maturity near 50 years and about 16 meters, and although sexually mature from their teens, they rarely breed before their late twenties. This slow life history explains why recovery from whaling has taken generations.
Family groups and click codes
Sperm whale moms live together in families.
They help each other with the babies. They talk with patterns of clicks, like a secret code.
Female sperm whales live in close family groups. On average about 12 females and their young form a unit that stays together for life, and they take care of each other's calves.
Young males leave the family between about 4 and 21 years old and join bachelor groups of males of a similar age. Sperm whales also talk with codas: short patterns of clicks. Different communities use different patterns, a bit like accents.
The basic social unit averages about 12 related and associated females with their young and is stable over decades. Young males leave at 4 to 21 years of age to form bachelor groups, which shrink as males age; the largest males are often solitary and return to tropical breeding grounds only occasionally.
Besides echolocation clicks, sperm whales exchange codas, stereotyped rhythmic click sequences. Britannica notes that codas differ between communities, so researchers speak of regional dialects, and there is evidence that some groups changed behavior in ways that helped them avoid whaling ships and that such behavior spread between groups.
Did you know?
Sperm whales make the loudest sounds of any animal.
Sperm whale clicks can reach about 230 decibels, louder than any other animal sound.
Echolocation clicks with source levels up to about 230 decibels make the sperm whale the loudest animal known.
Recovering from whaling
Long ago, people hunted many sperm whales.
Now most hunting has stopped. The whales are slowly coming back. People are still working to keep them safe.
From about 1800 to the 1980s, commercial whaling killed huge numbers of sperm whales for their oil. In 1986 the International Whaling Commission stopped commercial whaling, and sperm whale numbers are probably now increasing.
The IUCN lists the species as Vulnerable. Today's dangers include getting tangled in fishing gear, being hit by ships, swallowing plastic and other trash, and loud ocean noise that drowns out their clicks.
Commercial whaling from about 1800 into the 1980s greatly reduced sperm whale populations worldwide; the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on commercial whaling took effect in 1986, and NOAA considers numbers likely to be increasing. The IUCN currently lists the species as Vulnerable.
Current threats include entanglement in gillnets and trap lines, vessel strikes (made more likely by long rests at the surface), ingestion of marine debris in the deep layers where they feed, and underwater noise, which shrinks the space in which whales can hear each other. The long-term effects of contaminants and climate change are still uncertain.
IUCN Red List
How is the sperm whale doing in the wild?
- Least Concern
- Near Threatened
- Vulnerable (this animal)
- Endangered
- Critically Endangered
- Extinct in the Wild
- Extinct
Vulnerable
At high risk of disappearing from the wild.
See the IUCN Red List assessment · The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022.2
Amazing facts
-
Sperm whales make the loudest sounds of any animal.
Sperm whale clicks can reach about 230 decibels, louder than any other animal sound.
Echolocation clicks with source levels up to about 230 decibels make the sperm whale the loudest animal known.
-
A sperm whale's head is about a third of its body.
A sperm whale's head is so big that it makes up about one third of the whale's whole length.
The head, which holds the large spermaceti organ, accounts for roughly a third of total body length.
-
Sperm whale families talk in click codes.
Sperm whales use patterns of clicks called codas, and different communities have their own styles, like accents.
Coda repertoires vary between clans, and researchers describe these differences as regional accents and dialects.
-
A newborn sperm whale is about as long as a car.
A newborn sperm whale calf is about 4 meters long, about the length of a car.
Calves measure about 4 meters (13 feet) at birth after a gestation of 14 to 16 months.
Words to know
- toothed whale
- a whale that has teeth instead of baleen, such as a sperm whale or dolphin
- echolocation
- finding things by making sounds and listening for their echoes
- coda
- a pattern of clicks sperm whales use to communicate
- cephalopod
- the group of sea animals that includes squid and octopuses
- whaling
- hunting whales
- vulnerable
- facing a high risk of becoming endangered in the wild
Discovery challenge
-
What does a sperm whale mostly eat?
What is the sperm whale's main food?
Which prey dominates the sperm whale's diet?
- Grass
- Squid
- Tiny krill strained through baleen
Show the answer
Squid
Sperm whales mostly eat squid from the deep sea.
Sperm whales mostly eat squid, including giant squid, plus deep-sea fish and sharks.
Cephalopods, especially deep-water squid, dominate; sperm whales have teeth, not baleen.
-
How does a sperm whale find food in the dark?
How do sperm whales find squid in the pitch-dark deep sea?
Which sense does the sperm whale rely on to hunt at depth?
- With a flashlight
- With clicks and echoes
- By smell
Show the answer
With clicks and echoes
It makes loud clicks and listens for echoes.
They use echolocation: loud clicks bounce off squid and the echoes come back.
Biosonar: powerful clicks are projected forward, and echoes are received through the lower jaw.
-
Who lives in a sperm whale family?
Who lives together in a sperm whale family unit?
What is the core sperm whale social unit?
- Mothers, aunts and their young
- Only big males
- Whales and sharks together
Show the answer
Mothers, aunts and their young
Moms and their babies live together.
About 12 females and their young form a family; males leave as they grow up.
Long-term units of about 12 females and offspring; maturing males leave for bachelor groups.
-
Are sperm whales coming back after hunting stopped?
What happened to sperm whales after commercial whaling stopped in 1986?
What has happened to sperm whale numbers since the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling?
- They are slowly coming back
- They all disappeared
- Nothing changed
Show the answer
They are slowly coming back
Yes. They are slowly coming back.
Their numbers are probably increasing, but slowly, because mothers have calves only every five to seven years.
They are likely increasing, but slowly: low reproductive rates (one calf every five to seven years) and late maturity limit population growth.
Experiments to try
- Watch What If? Lab What if we could understand animal sounds? Animals pass messages with sounds, smells, movements and touch. Scientists have already worked out what a honey bee's dance means, and they are listening hard to whales. Imagine understanding three animals, a bee, a whale and a dog, and find out how much we really know.
- Watch What If? Lab What if whales returned to every ocean? Hunting in the last century took away most of the world's great whales, and since a 1985 ban on commercial whaling many are growing in number again. Whale poop feeds the tiny drifting plants at the base of the ocean food web, and whale bodies carry carbon to the deep sea. Imagine whales back in every ocean and follow what they might do.
Explore next
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Giant squid
The giant squid is one of the biggest animals without a backbone. Most of its length is two very long, stretchy feeding tentacles. It lives deep in oceans around the world, and it is so hard to find that the first photos of a living one in the wild were taken only in 2004.
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Animal
Common bottlenose dolphin
The common bottlenose dolphin is a fast, clever ocean mammal named for its short, thick snout. It finds fish with echoes, talks with whistles and clicks, and lives in warm and mild seas all around the world.
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Animal
Orca
The orca, also called the killer whale, is the largest member of the dolphin family and the ocean's top predator. Orcas live in every ocean, in close family groups called pods, made up of orcas related through their mothers. Each group has its own favorite foods, hunting tricks and even its own calls, which young orcas learn from their families.
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Animal
Blue whale
The blue whale is the largest animal ever to live on Earth, bigger than any dinosaur. It is a baleen whale: instead of teeth it has bristly plates that strain huge mouthfuls of seawater to catch krill. Blue whales live in every ocean except the Arctic, and their deep calls are among the loudest sounds made by any animal.
- Watch What If? Lab What if we could understand animal sounds? Animals pass messages with sounds, smells, movements and touch. Scientists have already worked out what a honey bee's dance means, and they are listening hard to whales. Imagine understanding three animals, a bee, a whale and a dog, and find out how much we really know.
-
Watch
Animal
Colossal squid
The colossal squid lives deep in the icy Southern Ocean around Antarctica. It is thought to be the heaviest animal without a backbone: one caught in 2007 weighed about 470 kilograms. Its arms and tentacles carry sharp, turning hooks, and in 2025 scientists filmed a living one in the wild for the first time.
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Watch
3D
Animal
Megamouth shark
The megamouth shark is a huge, slow shark with a big, rounded head and an enormous mouth. It swims with its mouth open to gulp tiny shrimp called krill and other small animals. It lives far out in the open ocean and is so rarely seen that scientists did not know it existed until 1976.
- Watch What If? Lab What if whales returned to every ocean? Hunting in the last century took away most of the world's great whales, and since a 1985 ban on commercial whaling many are growing in number again. Whale poop feeds the tiny drifting plants at the base of the ocean food web, and whale bodies carry carbon to the deep sea. Imagine whales back in every ocean and follow what they might do.
For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Describe how a sperm whale finds food in the dark using echolocation.
- Explain the difference between toothed whales and baleen whales.
- Describe sperm whale family units and their click codas.
- Explain why species that reproduce slowly recover slowly from hunting.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- Why might it be helpful for sperm whale mothers to share babysitting?
- How could loud ship noise make life harder for an animal that hunts by sound?
- Why do you think a whale that has a calf only every five to seven years takes so long to recover?
Try at home or in class
- Walk out 16 meters with a tape measure or by counting big steps to see the length of a large male sperm whale.
- Hold your breath while counting slowly, and compare it with a sperm whale's 45-minute dive (never hold your breath underwater to test it).
Key vocabulary: toothed whale, echolocation, coda, cephalopod, whaling, vulnerable
Where these facts come from
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species , International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN terms of use (no redistribution of Red List data or range maps))
- GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF Occurrence Search , Global Biodiversity Information Facility (CC0 1.0 (backbone); occurrence counts are facts derived from records under CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC)
- Sperm Whale , NOAA Fisheries
- Sperm whale , Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Sperm whale , National Geographic
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file: Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA only (credited on each page))
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 28, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.