A photographer went up close to a pod of giant sperm whales and captured incredible photos of the animals asleep in a vertical pose, a rare sight.
Professional underwater photographer Franco Banfi is the man who managed to capture these extremely rare and beautiful photographs as he followed a pack of sperm whales in the Caribbean Sea near the Dominica Island.
He stated that the whales suddenly stopped moving and all moved into a synchronised vertical rest. This cult-like behaviour was only first documented back in 2008 when a team of biologists from the United Kingdom and Japan drifted into a group of completely still sperm whales.
After further studies, they found that the sperm whale’s group slumber sessions occur for approximately 7% of a whale’s whole life in very short intervals of just 6-24 minutes.
Here is a video of the sleeping whales.
They are pretending to be bats.
What do you mean pretending?
Some heads up, some heads down.
Either CGI has gotten way too good or I’ve just grown way too cynical.
The photographer credited for these photos seems to be a real professional.
“cult-like”? Anthropomorphising much?
Too bad they didn’t show them waking up. Sort of curious if they jerk awake, slowly start moving, or just all go horizontal again at the same time.
And on a side note, I’ve suddenly realized a huge problem with reincarnating as a whale: no cup of coffee after a power nap.