Sperm Whales blow bubbles to achieve restful, vertical sleep

Post by jordanb » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

dguest wrote: post #10

The title of the original article [1] is a lot more clear: Buoyancy regulation through modulation of onboard gas volume by resting sperm whales They don't "blow bubbles" to sleep vertically, they vent gas to regulate their specific gravity. This allows them to sleep vertically below the surface. The scientists measured the gas release by listening for bubbles, but they did a lot more: they actually modeled the buoyan…

I'm amazed at Oar Fish, that are very big and very long, and apparently just hang vertically in the water column. They can go up and down very fast but not side-to-side. They feed by hanging under their prey and then move up from below to attack. Their bodies are so long and thin that they have no lateral rigidity.

https://edgedavao.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Oarfish-2.j...

Sailors used to think they were sea serpents.

Post by dguest » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 7:41 AM UTC

whycome wrote: post #27

dguest wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof, sorry if that was misleading. Maybe I'm overly fixated on the "to" in "to achieve": the whale doesn't care about the bubbles, they serve no important purpose in helping them sleep, it's just what happens when you vent air under water. It's also kind of a nitpick, but the scientists refer to resting whales, but specifically state that they don't know if they are sleeping. I guess getting a proper EEG on a sperm w…

I think this is tied to your own mental mapping of the term “blowing bubbles” and that it’s typically an active rather than passive action. But the headline isn’t wrong and it’s in fact doing a really good job of communicating the underlying idea in a thought provoking way while being technically correct. This is kind of a feat of science journalism.

It's more about the indirection, but it's a matter of taste. Whales blow bubbles to sleep. Humans stink to thermoregulate. We blow air to metabolize. Cars rumble to propel themselves forward. In each case there's a missing mechanism (buoyancy control, perspiration, respiration, internal combustion) which scientific articles generally put right in the title.

But I agree with you, better that scientists provide something for everyone. This is a good press release (it's not really journalism if it's coming from the university press office). The other very nice thing they did is link the original article in the first words of the release, although I would have made the hyperlink text "A new paper from University of St Andrews and Université de Neuchâtel" to make it clear that the paper is there. Hyperlinks are cheap and a lot of science is free to access, there's no excuse to leave that out.

Re: Sperm Whales blow bubbles to achieve restful, vertical sleep

Re: Sperm Whales blow bubbles to achieve restful, vertical sleep