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Moby Dick Chapter 74 The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View.

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 5:47 am
by Robert Tulip
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/270 ... m#2HCH0074

The opportunity to investigate the biology of the decapitated heads of a sperm whale and a right whale is too good to miss.

The weird thing is that their eyes and ears are tiny, and the eyes are not well placed for stereoscopic vision
Far back on the side of the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale's jaw, if you narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you would fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all proportion is it to the magnitude of the head. ...

while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the whale's eyes, effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which towers between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of course, must wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this side, and another distinct picture on that side; while all between must be profound darkness and nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window. But with the whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly impairing the view.
This cartoon whale has eyes about 1000 times too big, as well as primatic stereo. Wrong wrong wrong.

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Re: Moby Dick Chapter 74 The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View.

Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 12:10 pm
by heledd
Yes wrong. They have an extra aid to their senses - sonic - which seems to be one of the functions of the spermatoza. I was amazed to read that they can actually heat this up to aid buoyancy and the spout acts as the cooling mechanism. Well I dunno, we start talking about Moby Dick and we end up talking about ....whales