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The log books were full of complaints in the 19th century.
The hunters complained that in just a few years it had become increasingly difficult to catch sperm whales.
Had the sea creatures learned to watch out for the ships and to flee from them?
This presumption made by the whalers immediately piqued the interest of Hal Whitehead of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.
Sperm whales got their name from their large head, which looks like a pot - in Low German, pott
Source: Getty Images / Tim Melling
Hapless whaling
The biologist studies sperm whales, their culture and behavior.
In order to solve the riddle of the unsuccessful hunt, he and two colleagues evaluated old, now digitized logbooks from American whalers and their expeditions in the North Pacific.
Although the demand for whalebone, ivory and whale bacon was very high 200 years ago and the hunters traveled almost 80,000 days, they only encountered the marine mammals on a total of 2,405 days.
That corresponds to a success rate of a meager three percent.
Using the logbooks, the scientists also calculated that the catch quota had dropped by a whopping 58 percent in less than two and a half years.
The big ships weren't exactly inconspicuous.
They sailed the ocean for days and weeks looking for the sperm whales.
Once they had sighted a group, the hunters switched to small rowing boats.
If they were close enough to them, they shot the animals with their harpoons.
This wood engraving from 1869 shows whalers hunting
Source: Getty Images / Grafissimo
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As Whitehead and his team write in their study in the journal Biology Letters, the enormous decline in the catch rate cannot be explained by the greater hunting talent of the early whalers.
It seems that whales quickly learned effective defense strategies.
Hal Whitehead, Professor of Biology at Dalhousie University
Orcas are the only natural predators of sperm whales.
They hunt their calves and young animals.
To protect them, sperm whales form a circle around their young.
With their heads inward, they beat their powerful tail fins to drive away the killer whales.
However, this defense technique was of no use to the marine mammals, up to 20 meters long and 50 tons, against the whalers.
On the contrary, they even had an easier time of it because the animals did not flee.
Source: Getty Images / Gerard Soury
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But it is not for nothing that whales are among the most intelligent animals in the world.
As the hunters write in the logbooks, the animals that survived the early bloodbaths realized that they had to flee from their tormentors.
Not only that, the sperm whales understood that if they swam away against the wind, they had a better chance of escaping because the sailing ships were less able to follow them and more often gave up.
Sperm whale females live with their young, while the males form their own groups or travel alone.
The animals passed this survival strategy on to one another.
The escape behavior spread so quickly among the sperm whales in the Pacific that it cannot have been genetically inherited.
Whitehead's researchers are certain that it was a so-called cultural evolution.
Source: Getty Images / by wildestanimal
The so-called sperm whale schools, consisting of up to 20 animals, communicate with each other over great distances and exchange ideas about worthwhile food sources.
Hence, it is likely that they also warned of dangers such as the fishing vessels.
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It was only when the sailing ships were equipped with grenades by steamers and harpoons that the whalers' success rate rose again.
The animals simply had no chance against this technological slaughterhouse.
Young whale leads coast guard to dead conspecific
In the Gulf of Naples, the coast guard discovered a dead whale over 23 meters long.
It could be the largest ever seen in the Mediterranean.
The guards were led to the carcass by a whale calf - possibly the child of the dead animal.
Source: WORLD
The scientists assume, however, that their intelligence and ability to adapt quickly will benefit them again today in order to face the new challenges of the oceans such as collisions with ships, suspension lines and fishing nets.
However, the sperm whales are troubled by climate change and environmental pollution as well as the extreme noise from shipping, which makes their communication difficult.
The sea creatures with the largest brains in the animal kingdom are now under protection.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN classifies them in its Red List as endangered.
It is not known how many sperm whales there are in the world.
Their number is only roughly estimated at around 360,000.