I have always liked nature shows on television. Somehow listening to Richard Attenborough tell me about elephants on the Serengeti plains makes me feel more intelligent. It must be the British dialect. I am fortunate to be able to watch nature shows on the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) on Saturdays. Now these shows can't take the place of classic Saturday morning cartoons, but since I can't watch Rocky and Bullwinkle on Saturday mornings any longer, I am somewhat content to watch real meese (Not sure if that's the correct plural term for “moose,” but it sounds better than “mooses”).
Last Saturday, I was watching one of my BBC Nature programs and Mr. Attenborough began to tell me about these male sperm whales that would beach themselves on this one particular shore. These rather large aquatic mammals have been doing this periodically for a long time. I watched with great interest to find out what the “experts” might speculate about the reason behind such odd behavior. It was said that these guys use echo-location to find food and other things. The whales send out these loud noises and listen for the echo and that tells them how far they are away from the beach or if there is a big squid that can be caught.
It seems that sperm whales are partial to calamari. I can relate to that, I rather like calamari, myself. The whale expert said that he thought that these whales might be hearing noises from the beach (like music from a beach party or something like that, I suppose) and that may be causing confusion for the whales. Maybe these whales were looking for a party and found themselves stuck on the beach. That theory doesn't really explain why all the whales on the beach were males. Wouldn't a female whale be interested in a beach party as well?
I have my own theories. These male sperm whales travel in groups called “bachelor pods,” as opposed to staying in “bachelor pads,” I reckon. I figure these whales, being “bachelors,” don't have females around to tell them which way to go; and, of course being guys, they aren't about to stop and ask for directions. This seems to be a fairly logical theory to me.
If anyone happens to see me on the beach somewhere, there is no reason to attempt to push me back into the ocean. I assure you, I haven't gotten “lost” and accidentally beached myself.
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