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  4. microraptor says

    Has there been any research on how sperm whales are able to eat giant squid despite the amount of ammonia in their tissues?

  5. StevoR says

    @ ^ microraptor : Well, humans eat squid and eenjoy it despite the ammonia in their smaller cousins so .. Hmm..

    Plus that fermented shark dish the Inuit (?) /Scandanavians have..

    Anyway, not a marine biologist here (sadly, would be cool to be.. Fascinating profession)

    Lessee (searches metaphorical web – or is web literal inetrnet now?) :

    A lot of the ammonium ions in these squid are concentrated in the mantle. All we really know for sure is that the whale eats a tremendous number of squid, based on the numbers of beaks retained in the stomach; the beaks are found in the ‘head end’ of the squid.

    I would be pretty surprised if the whale ate only heads, discarding the mantle, but on a large squid it is something worth considering. They might be a little more selective in their ‘grazing’ than we give them credit for. However, captive/rehabilitating whales are prone to gastric problems when fed commercially available (non-ammoniacal) loliginid squid (check out some of the work done at MOTE Marine Lab, Sarasota, Florida), so perhaps the whale does need the ammonium ion loads in these deep-sea squid.

    Source: https://tonmo.com/threads/whales-and-ammonia.4400/

  6. StevoR says

    PS. Is Iceland Scandanavian?

    is that fermented shark dish thingy Scandi / Icelandic / Baltic / Greenlandic(?).. anyhow.. Guess folks get the gist of it.. Hopefully.

  9. John Morales says

    Whales are naturals at it, others not so much:

    mhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1oByXmohhU

  10. erik333 says

    @6 StevoR
    Being swedish i was about to blame Norweigians for any shark fermentation. Iceland makes sense. They also live on volcanoes.

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