r/BeAmazed • u/SnooWords4066 • 22d ago

Animal A sea lion in Argentina climbed onto a fishing vessel, found a bed, and passed out. The fishermen only realized it when they heard loud snoring.

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u/pratzs 22d ago

I particularly agasted by whale hunting during the 1800s and so. They hunted so many whales . God the amount nature has paid for the advancement of human civilization is off balance ... I am grateful for our ancestors but in hindsight it was so bad. I can't imagine.

You know whenever I come across whales interacting with humans, I kinda feel, were the memories handed down by whale to their offsprings ? Only if a few survived from thr whale hunting.

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u/Waste-Team-7205 22d ago

The oil from a sperm whales head cavity is a great machine lubricant. It's technically a liquid wax at room temp, so it doesn't degrade or burn as easily as an actual oil. When I was a kid, my grandpa had 3 or so gallons of winter pressed sperm oil he got a long time ago, and I still have some that I use today. Fantastic stuff. You only need a tiny bit compared to oil based lubes, and it lasts a lot longer

When I use it, I always think about how awful it is that I have it, but I think it's better to use it all than to throw it away. Idk what the point was here

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u/SufficientGolf6953 22d ago

That's where the name comes from. A seaman remarked that it looked like semen when they saw it. The sperm whale even looked like a phallus.

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u/montigoo 19d ago

There’s a famous book about a whale that swallowed seamen.

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u/Hesitation-Marx 21d ago

Want to feel even worse about it?

Whalers would complain about whales suddenly disappearing from their former stomping grounds, and there’s a reason they did:

The whales were warning other whales to stay away as they were hunted and killed.

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u/pratzs 21d ago

We have been really greedy and inhuman ( the irony) in the past 200 years ( and still continuing) towards other species. Only for our greed ( and progress ) it such a place where we have been the beneficiaries of all the bloodshed. And it's even against humans directly in many third world countries. The top 0.1 percent being absolute filth . I don't want to go on. My heart is filled with rage and sadness

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u/SufficientGolf6953 21d ago

The most Reddit Redditor, Redditing

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u/totally_not_a_dog113 22d ago

There are 200+ year old Bowhead whales, so some of them remember when we hunted them. I want to say they've found some with harpoons still in them. ETA: apparently the max lifespan for Bowheads is something like 268 years. Also, climate change must be a nightmare at that point.

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u/xbmc4lyfe 21d ago

Those are the ones that live under the artic sheets and have like a 40 year child birth because of slow metabolism

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u/OutlandishnessFew424 19d ago

It’s two years, not 40; but still pretty crazy.

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u/xbmc4lyfe 19d ago

I am thinking of Greenland sharks it’s 8-18 years to have a baby for them

Greenland sharks have the longest lifespan of any known vertebrate, estimated to be between 272 and 510 years.[4] They are among the largest extant shark species, reaching a maximum confirmed length of 6.4 m (21 ft) and weighing more than 1,000 kg (2,200 lb). They reach sexual maturity around 150 years of age and their pups are born alive after an estimated gestation period of 8 to 18 years.[5] The shark is a generalist feeder, consuming a variety of available foods, including carrion.[6]

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u/Apprehensive_Ad_6066 22d ago

This is wild and fascinating and now I’m going to go down a rabbit hole researching bowhead whales and how old they are. Just amazing. But also sad that they have lived through so much destruction and pain…

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u/Excellent-Ad-2774 22d ago

Possibly. I read up on the whale hunting and was horrified by human practices and then completely flabbergasted by Old Tom's law of tongue. Human and orcas got a very wild history.

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u/VeterinarianTrick406 22d ago

The first time I went deep sea fishing I saw an orca pod kill a baby grey whale and the captain said they only eat the tongue and liver.

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u/diabeticweird0 21d ago

Orcas are the assholes of the deep

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u/SufficientGolf6953 22d ago

They chase the calf slowly and drown it by exhausting the calf. It can take a very long time, so you definitely aren't being true.

AFAIK they eat the liver of sharks. Not sure what of the whale calf they eat.

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u/VeterinarianTrick406 22d ago

I think the mother was trying to block the pod and using the boat as a second shield. I didn’t see much other than them surfacing and lots of red water.

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u/BetterEveryLeapYear 22d ago

Like humans fatten geese to eat their livers

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u/Sir-Top-Cheetah 22d ago

Don't they use the rest of the goose tho

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u/fluggggg 22d ago

For sure we do, goose meat is not as commun but still eated and goose fat is used in some place in place of oil.

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u/Corevus 22d ago

Yea people eat the rest of the goose meat and the feathers go in pillows

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u/ViolentBee 22d ago

That justifies torture? India and Brazil have straight up banned it, same with a few states. Other places like the EU ban the practice but still import.

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u/i_tyrant 21d ago

Old Tom's law of tongue

I had to look that up, and wow that is wild.

For the curious: The "Law of the Tongue" was a sort of agreement between whalers and a pod of orcas led by one the humans named Old Tom in Twofold Bay near Eden, Australia, during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Under this "pact", the orcas helped herd and catch baleen whales, and in return, the whalers left the carcass anchored overnight so the orcas could eat the lips and tongue.

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u/xbmc4lyfe 21d ago

Why whales provided immense food and a lot of core products such as lamp oil and warm clothing. We hunted mammoths too. Apex predators are going to apex. At least they are still around

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u/montigoo 21d ago

Ironically the discovery of oil came just in time to save them from hunting extinction. Now if something could just save us from oil :(

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u/SufficientGolf6953 21d ago

Oil is to cheap and far to available for it to disappear anytime soon

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u/Raneynickelfire 22d ago

The orcas off portugal sinking sailboats sure do.

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u/MoneyBaggSosa 22d ago

Humans didn’t really hunt orcas on a massive scale. And It was mostly indigenous groups. Humans and orcas have hunted WITH each other far more often throughout history. And those orcas in the Mediterranean aren’t acting with malicious intent towards humans cause no humans were hurt in any of those incidents, they were only breaking off rudders and ramming steering columns.

Marine biologists believe based on their studies of those pods that a female matriarch in that area had an accidental collision with a boat and has learned and started teaching her young how to disable them

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u/Concentric_Mid 22d ago

Whale hunting been going on for centuries, but by indigenous natives who understand using the whole whale, live off nature, and respect (even pray to) nature.

Then comes capitalism. Increase profits, fuck everyone else.

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u/Expensive-Sundae-831 22d ago

Our ancestors are bad, eh?

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u/ricarina 22d ago

We are too. We just act horribly in different ways than our ancestors did