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Global Museum

When sperm whales need a nap, they take a deep breath, dive down about 45 feet and arrange themselves into perfectly-level, vertical patterns. They sleep sound and still for up to two hours at a time between breaths, in pods of 5 or 6 whales, presumably for protection. No one knew whales slept vertically until a 2008 study documented the behavior. And no one captured really good photography of it in the wild until 2017.

πŸ“Έ Patrick Dykstra
Visit for more - Wildplanetexplorer.com #whales

27 comments
haricots introvert

@globalmuseum I sleep sitting up at times. Are you calling me fat?

Cmflyer

@globalmuseum that photo just pre-loaded one of my future nightmares

Infoseepage #StopGazaGenocide

@globalmuseum Reminds me of watching green sea turtles surface for breath and then go down and cram themselves under coral ledges for long periods so that they can rest. They can be down there a very long time.

Tim Lavoie

@Infoseepage @globalmuseum I wondered about sea turtles. I was on a shallow wreck dive at night in the Caribbean a couple years back, and there were quite a few of them tucked under bits of sunken ship.

Ghost of Enrico Palazzo πŸŽƒ

@globalmuseum

I'm getting: "The council will decide your fate" vibes.

Crystal_Fish_Caves

@globalmuseum Crystal Fish Caves wildly approves of this post. It is some of the freakiest animal behavior out there in a world of some seriously weird stuff! I mean really, Seahorses?!? That's how I know god does drugs.

AzureArmageddon

@globalmuseum It looks like a bunch of whale models being spawned into a game or being preloaded just out-of-bounds for the next level.

SapphicSelene :priconne_uzuki:

@globalmuseum Saw someone else once comment that if medieval monks saw this they'd either levitate in ecstasy, or draw an incomprehensible picture of this in the margins of The Gospels while saying something like "The Lord maketh the Leviathan to gaze upon Heaven from whense their salvation came."

Bill Zaumen

@sapphicselene @globalmuseum Hey, we're lucky that the guys who wrote that story about Jonah being swallowed by a whale didn't know about this. They would have had to add that the whale didn't take a nap - that would have been pretty unpleasant for Jonah.

YOGA~ZEN πŸ™

@globalmuseum
I suddenly remembered when I do sirsasana or headstand... is there any relation?!?!?

lizzard

@globalmuseum it sounds so nice to be a whale πŸ‹πŸ³

Matt Londre

@globalmuseum if you think this is crazy, remember that whales _still_ have no idea how humans nap. No pictures at all of us snoozing under trees or on subway seats!

The cat who walks thru walls

@mattstodon Not sure that will still hold true once we manage to decode their songs. They might be spoken lore like the Scandinavian sagas, or they might hold other types of information... @globalmuseum

noodle

@globalmuseum This is not your domain. You have breached the darkness.

Jeff Zugale

@globalmuseum every Star Trek fan will tell you this is how they communicate with their extraterrestrial friends, who will be reaaaallly pissed off if we let whales go extinct.

Shred

@globalmuseum Just wondering: If you're a Global Museum, why don't you use the metric system that most of the people on the world can understand without having to use a calculator? πŸ€”

NBAnthony2k

@globalmuseum What keeps them from floating or sinking while they're asleep?

Carl-Henrik Barnekow

@globalmuseum Wow. I’ve heard about a few years ago but never seen a photo like this about it. Thank you for sharing.

sysfrank

@globalmuseum

Makes me wonder if this somehow helps the CSF of whales circulate through their brains to wash away toxins. Is this the balance point where their buoyancy balances their weight. Are they "Sleeping in weightlessness?"

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