The Great Sperm Whale: A Natural History of the Ocean's Most Magnificent and Mysterious Creature Hardcover – April 6, 2011

This is the book that I have been waiting for , for 50 years . As I kept my childhood facination with whales and over the years have read most everything that could be found . I have enjoyed reading Hal Whitehead , the journey of Nelson Haley and the novels of Hank Searls and Herman Melville . But this book is special . It is an easy reading , thourghly researched book , covering all facets of the most amazing of all creatures . The only question that was not addressed , that I still wonder about is why is the whale's skin wrinkled like a prune ? There must be a very good reason for it . But neither this nor any other book I have read , has speculated on its purpose . I highly recomend the book . It is the number one book on the subject , at this time ......Lee H.

Herman Melville said of the sperm whale, "His is an unwritten life." Not anymore.I'm a longtime fan of Ellis' work, so it was no surprise I loved this entry in his works on marine life. I'd read a great deal on this animal, including Ellis' own earlier books, but I had no idea just how bizarre Physeter macrocephalus really is. It has countless features (like the single forward spout) that don't appear in other whales, and a nose/spermaceti organ so remarkably weird it belongs on a creature from another planet. It wasn't until the last decade that scientists gave credence to the startling fact that sperm whales hunt squid in darkness by finding and then stunning them with sound. The sperm's evolution is very well traced, showing many transitional forms (including the fearsome Livyatan melvillei), but there is still a lot we don't know about how this animal came to be so unique.As always with an Ellis book, this one is a mini-reference library, with a bibliography running 23 pages. Also as always, Ellis' own drawings and paintings bring the whale to life in a way the photographic record (which was sparse until remarkably recently) can't quite capture. (Ellis' postscript on how one paints a whale mural is fascinating "bonus footage" that comes with the book.)Everyone is curious about how big the whale gets. Ellis rejects the idea that bull sperms were historically larger than the 62-foot modern record, but he admits that a pair of 11-inch teeth in a museum (8 inches is big) make one wonder just what the all-time record was. Ellis does not mention one oddity, the old reports of aberrant sperm whales with true dorsal fins - these may be in error, but I would have liked Ellis' analysis.I would reduce the rating to 4.5 stars on a couple of minor flaws - the occcasional wrong word has slipped through editing, and there is some repetition. Ellis gives Charles Townsend's estimate of the casualties of New England Yankee whaling on page 238, but doesn't point out it's drastically wrong until page 291.The sperm whale really is, as Ellis says, "The ocean's most magnificent and mysterious creature." Pick up this remarkable book and meet the monarch of the seas.Matt Bille, author, Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology (for which Richard Ellis kindly proofed the chapters on cetaceans). (Hancock, 2006)[...]

Richard Elllis is right: the Sperm Whale is an enigma.It's 2011, and we still don't know how Sperm Whales hunt and capture their prey. Scientist can infer that this animal can dive down to 10,000 ft, but how can a slow moving whale catch a squid that moves through the water like a bullet? We can't account for his strange shape; unlike other cetaceans, the Sperm Whale is about as streamlined for aquadynamics as a potato. We cannot account for much of its evolution. We know Sperm Wales are intelligent, but do they have language? Do they have culture?In 1851, Melville praise the Sperm Whale as a greatest animal because he is shrouded in mystery. Look at him from any perspective, and you still never get the entire idea of him. Richard Ellis brings us up to date on the science of the Sperm Whale, but there are just as many questions today as in the 19th Century.(Regarding Moby-Dick, it seems this book has become the exclusive domain of English Departments, but I'm not so sure Critical or Feminist or Deconstructionist Theory is the appropriate way to respond to Melville's masterpiece. "The Great Sperm Whale" feels to me much closer to the spirit of Moby-Dick than any critical material I have encountered.)Here's what we do know about the Sperm Whale: no mammal can dive so deep for so long. The Sperm Whale has the largest brain in the history of this planet. Archeologists were dumbfounded to discover the great Tyrannosaurus Rex with a head 52 inches in length; the Sperm Whale's head measures 20 feet! The Sperm Whale is the largest predator ever (the Blue Whale Ellis does not count as a predator, because it hardly 'hunts' krill; rather, it's feeding more resembles grazing).I came to this book because of my passion for Moby-Dick, which takes up much of Ellis' analysis. In fact, this book feels like a long, beautiful post-script to The Great American Novel. You got the whaling lore, the (loosely pieced-together) evolution of the Sperm Whale, the glorious business of whaling in the 19th Century, the relentless hunt of the 20th which drove the animal to endangered status, their social lives, their incredible (yet untestable) intelligence.And the paintings and illustrations! I don't know how to categorize Ellis: is he a great artist who knows how to write or a great writer who knows how to paint?If you come to this book from a passion for Moby-Dick, like I did, you'll love it. If you were one of those kids that wanted to become a marine biologist when they grew up (I swear they were half of my kindergarten class), you'll love this book, too.

I am working on some paintings about whales, and I wanted to be able to visualize what they look like underwater; what do they eat, and where do they live? This book gave me a great basis for my paintings.It also explored whales through history, and what was known and when---beginning with Moby Dick through today. It is a very complete book. I borrowed it from the library, but I plan to buy my own copy as well.