How to Use sperm whale in a Sentence
sperm whale
noun-
The 46-foot skeleton of a sperm whale is quite a sight.
—Alex Erdekian, Condé Nast Traveler, 31 Mar. 2021
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And the sperm whale clans may be thousands of years old.
—Tom Metcalfe, NBC News, 19 Sep. 2022
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The smallest could fit on the head of a pin; the largest, found in the gut of a sperm whale, grows up to 30 feet long.
—Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post, 2 Jan. 2018
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The sperm whale is the largest of the toothed whales and it’s known to dive as deep as 1,000 meters in search of squid to eat.
—Cecilia Rodriguez, Forbes, 19 Mar. 2025
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In March 2024, a deceased sperm whale washed up on a Venice beach.
—Jon Chapman, Miami Herald, 18 Feb. 2025
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Daniel Kraus has a long tattoo of a sperm whale on his left arm.
—Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune, 16 Aug. 2023
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But that doesn’t mean sperm whales want to restrict themselves to the open ocean.
—Emma Marris, The Atlantic, 22 Feb. 2023
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This is still a rich area, but there are no more big squid, so no more sperm whales.
—Smithsonian, 22 Aug. 2019
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The shrill sounds of the sperm whale are downright dangerous.
—Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 17 Oct. 2023
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The world’s largest predators, sperm whales spend most of their lives hunting.
—Carolyn Wells, Longreads, 8 Sep. 2023
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For example, the streamlined teardrop hulls of post-World War II subs are based on the shape of the sperm whale.
—Michael Peck, Forbes, 20 Oct. 2021
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Since the late 1980s, trips to watch humpback, sperm whales and orca have sprung up all around Japan.
—Simon Denyer, Washington Post, 20 Dec. 2019
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Then the pilot whales made another run at the sperm whales.
—Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2023
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On the West Coast:A 40-foot endangered sperm whale washed up dead on the Oregon coast.
—Amanda Oglesby, USA TODAY, 1 Feb. 2023
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The notion of idly chatting with a sperm whale elicits sci-fi awe.
—Sam Firman, Longreads, 11 July 2024
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Still, in proportion to our body size, the human brain is bigger than that of the sperm whale.
—Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, 19 Nov. 2022
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Ship strikes are responsible for more than half of all sperm whale deaths in the area.
—Claudia Geib, Smithsonian Magazine, 15 Aug. 2022
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That's how many pounds of plastic and waste were found inside the stomach of a sperm whale that washed up on a beach in Spain.
—Doug Criss, CNN, 12 Apr. 2018
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These oscillations might have slashed the numbers of squid that the sperm whales eat.
—National Geographic, 18 Oct. 2016
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However, events turn left when a large sperm whale sinks their ship.
—Gabrielle Rockson, People.com, 6 Jan. 2025
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On December 13, a 32-foot sperm whale swam to Rockaway Beach to die.
—Laura Thompson, Curbed, 15 Feb. 2023
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The snapping shrimp, aka the pistol shrimp, is one of the loudest creatures in the ocean, along with the sperm whale and beluga whale.
—Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 12 July 2022
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The epic battles between the colossal squid and the sperm whale show that when the sperm whale is ready for a meal, the squid isn’t always ready for the taking.
—Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, 3 July 2023
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The 48-foot long male sperm whale ended up washing up on a beach near Berners Bay in mid-March.
—Alex McCarthy, The Seattle Times, 13 Apr. 2019
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Connecticut Connecticut's state mammal is the sperm whale, the largest of the Earth's toothed whales.
—Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY, 8 Apr. 2023
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With only a couple of these calls, a sperm whale can scope out schools of squid from almost 800 feet away.
—Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 17 Oct. 2023
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But it’s thought that colossal squid makes up at least 77 percent of a sperm whale’s diet.
—Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, 3 July 2023
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The silence of the sperm whales went unchallenged until 1957.
—Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2023
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Project Ceti, for example, has been decoding the click trains of sperm whales and the songs of humpbacks.
—Arik Kershenbaum, WIRED, 22 Dec. 2024
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In contrast, just 27 sperm whale sightings have been recorded in the past 35 years, averaging less than one per year.
—Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, 28 Mar. 2025
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sperm whale.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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