If a sperm whale’s face is as mysterious as a sphinx, its brain is an unsolvable geometric puzzle—one no scholar can fully map or understand.
A fully grown sperm whale’s skull stretches at least twenty feet long.
Pop open its lower jaw, and a side view of the skull looks just like a gentle, sloped plane sitting flat on a level base.
But in a living whale, this sloped shape is almost completely filled out and squared off. Massive layers of oily junk and sperm oil pile high on top of the skull, changing its entire visible form.
The top end of the skull dips into a hollow crater, perfectly shaped to hold that huge mass of oil and fatty tissue.
Beneath this long crater floor lies a tiny hidden cavity. It’s barely ten inches long and ten inches deep.
And inside that small space sits the whale’s actual brain—just a tiny handful of tissue for such a gigantic beast.
In life, the whale’s real brain is a full twenty feet back from what looks like its forehead.
It’s tucked deep behind thick, massive layers of bone and tissue, hidden like a heavily guarded inner fortress behind Quebec’s sprawling outer fortifications.
So well-concealed is this tiny brain that many whalers outright refuse to believe it exists at all.
They swear the whale’s true “brain” is the vast cubic yards of sperm oil filling its head. To their eyes, the swirling, folded, layered mass of oily tissue feels far more fitting for the whale’s immense power. They insist this mysterious head mass is where the creature’s intelligence lives.
It’s clear, then, that judging a living sperm whale’s head by its outward appearance is a total trick.
You can’t see its real brain from the outside. You can’t feel it either.
Like all mighty, powerful beings, the sperm whale hides its true self behind a deceptive outer face.
Scrape all the sperm oil and fatty mass off a whale’s skull, then look at the rear, higher end of the bone structure.
You’ll be shocked how much it resembles a human skull viewed from the exact same angle.
Scale this whale skull down to human size, set it among a collection of human skulls, and you’d never tell them apart at a glance.
Look closely at the shallow dents along the top of the scaled-down whale skull. Using old phrenology terms, you’d say this creature lacked self-esteem and reverence.
Pair those apparent flaws with the whale’s unmatched size and strength, and you’ll get a raw, unglamorous, yet truest sense of what supreme power really is.
You might think the whale’s tiny actual brain is too small and simple to ever fully study or understand.
But I’ve got another way to look at it.
Stare closely at the spine of almost any four-legged animal. You’ll notice its vertebrae look like a string of tiny, underdeveloped skulls, each bearing a faint, basic resemblance to a full skull.
German scholars once theorized that spinal vertebrae are nothing more than unfinished, undeveloped skulls.
But I’m certain people noticed this strange visual similarity long before the Germans ever wrote it down.
A foreign friend once showed me this exact quirk. He’d killed an enemy, taken the skeleton’s spine, and inlaid the vertebrae into the curved beak of his canoe as a low-relief decoration.
I believe phrenologists have always missed a critical piece of the puzzle.
They study the brain and cerebellum, but never extend their research down the spinal canal.
A person’s character isn’t just in their skull—it’s written in their spine.
I’d rather judge a person’s soul by their backbone than their skull, no matter who they are.
A thin, weak spine can never support a full, noble, courageous spirit.
I’m proud of my own spine. It’s the sturdy, bold staff holding up the flag I proudly unfurl for the whole world to see.
Now apply this spinal phrenology to the sperm whale.
Its skull cavity connects directly to the first vertebra in its neck.
The spinal canal inside that first neck vertebra measures ten inches wide and eight inches tall, shaped like a downward-pointing triangle.
The canal narrows slightly as it runs down the rest of the spine, but stays surprisingly large for a long stretch.
This massive canal is filled with the same strange, fibrous tissue that makes up the brain—the spinal cord. It connects straight to the whale’s brain with no break.
Even more remarkable: for several feet after leaving the skull cavity, the spinal cord stays thick and full, nearly matching the brain’s size and girth.
With all that in mind, why shouldn’t we study and map the whale’s character through its spine?
Its tiny formal brain is more than balanced out by the enormous, powerful spinal cord running the length of its body.
I’ll leave that thought for phrenologists to ponder as they please.
For a moment, let’s run with this spinal theory to explain the sperm whale’s famous hump.
That tall, stately hump sits directly atop one of the whale’s largest vertebrae. It’s essentially the outer, curved shape of that powerful spinal bone.
Judging by its position and structure, I believe this grand hump is the whale’s core source of unshakable resolve and indomitable will.
And you will soon see for yourself just how unbreakable this giant creature truly is.