The sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) was a large cetacean, a whale, indigenous to planet Earth. Unlike baleen whales, sperm whales had teeth which they used to catch giant squid thousands of feet down in the sea. (TOS movie & novelization: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
Humans once hunted sperm whales for their meat, blubber, and ambergris. (TOS movie: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home; TAS episode: "The Ambergris Element")
In the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Moby Dick was a white sperm whale. (TOS novelization: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
The image of a sperm whale appeared on a display within the HMS Bounty when Spock searched for a match for the sounds of the Cetacean Probe amongst Earth's animals.
In the year 1986, models of the sperm whale and pygmy sperm whale were displayed in a glass case at the Cetacean Institute in Sausalito, California. (TOS movie: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
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Connections[]
Earth cetacean species | |
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Baleen whales | blue whale • fin whale • gray whale • humpback whale • minke whale • right whale • sei whale |
Toothed whales | Atlantic bottlenose dolphin • Baird's beaked whale • Cuvier's beaked whale • pilot whale • orca • Pacific bottlenose dolphin • pygmy sperm whale • sperm whale • Takaya's whale |
External links[]
- Sperm whale article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.
- Sperm whale article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.