Dwarf Sperm Whale

• GeneralIt releases a cloud of reddish fluid, like a curtain of ink, to escape.
• When threatened it releases a cloud of reddish fluid from an intestinal sac, creating a smokescreen under water just as a squid does with its ink.
• Behind the eye it has a pale crescent-shaped mark, known as a false gill, which gives it a deceptive resemblance to a small shark.
• It defends itself like a squid. The two Kogia species are the only cetaceans able to expel a cloud of ink: they contract a sac in the intestine and release up to twelve litres of a reddish-brown liquid that forms a screen and buys them time to escape.
• It is the smallest cetacean to be called a whale: it does not exceed 2.7 m, less than a bottlenose dolphin.
• It feeds by suction, mostly on squid from mid and deep waters, along with fish and crustaceans.
• Almost everything known about it comes from strandings: it is among the deep-water cetaceans that strand most often, and at the same time among the hardest to see alive at sea.
• It does not leap when it dives: it sinks vertically, without raising its tail or making a splash, and at the surface it floats motionless, showing only the back of its head and the dorsal fin.
• Until 1966 it was considered the same species as the pygmy sperm whale; the two are told apart above all by the position of the dorsal fin, which sits further forward in this species.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (mammal)

Habitat and environment

Deep waters over the continental slope in temperate and tropical seas worldwide

Gestation / incubation

9-11 months

Litter / clutch size

1

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Kogia sima