Ben-Amots: An animal also has soul

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Same page in Hebrew

An animal also has a soul - on whales
Copyright © 2009 by Netsivi Ben-Amots
English translation Copyright © 2014 by Netsivi Ben-Amots

When I was a boy I had a book:
"Animal also has a soul" (only in Hebrew, "Gam lahaya neshama," גם לחיה נשמה published by the association of friends of Tel-Aviv Zoo). In the book, Baruch Gopher, the manager of Tel-Aviv Zoo then, told exciting stories about the animals in the zoo. Almost every animal had a name. Who remembers today that there existed a she-hyena named "Davik" and what was her story?

After many years I heard on the radio a Japanese song translated into Hebrew. In my variation, some lines were:
"The whale,
is big and wise;
He hides under the sea."

Between the lines, a full world hides, some of which was discovered in research presented in scientific movies, mostly on the National Geographic Channel, but also on Channel 8 (Science Channel of Israel).

A dolphin investigated divers with a scooter (a scooter is an undersea driving machine with a propeller). The dolphin expelled air bubbles similar to those expelled by the diving equipment of the divers, and rolled in the water similar to helices, producing helical pressure waves like the propeller of the scooter of the divers produced.

Another dolphin joined a woman diver who dived near him and followed her. Whales and most fish and dolphins lack reverse "gear." Therefore they avoid entering undersea caves, so as not to be trapped in them. I cannot forget the worried look on the dolphin's "face" when his woman friend entered an undersea cave, while he waited outside the cave.

In another case, dolphins surrounded people swimming in the water when sharks showed up.

A whale grabbed a woman and dragged her deep into the water. She was sure that she would drown and die, because even if the whale would set her free, she would not be able to reach the surface of the sea before she suffocated. But at the last minute, the whale dragged her at maximum speed to the water surface and set her free.

The whale just wanted to know how much time the woman could live without breathing; when he felt she couldn't hold her breath anymore, he dragged her to the surface at full speed to save her.

These are examples of the intelligence and soul of marine mammals.

Whales live in groups. They have a language. Each whale has a first name and a family name.

The family name is a word unique for the group, shared by all the members of the group.

The first name is a special word unique for each whale.

Whales and dolphins have exceptionally good hearing.

Whales are capable of vocally communicating from a distance of thousands of kilometers. They even use "voice channels" in the oceans, produced because of differences in temperature in different regions and depths in the ocean. In these voice channels, the voice is less weakened so that their good hearing enables them to communicate even between two far ends of the Pacific Ocean.

A friend told me that he had read about British research, in which dozens of years ago measurements proved that dolphins vocally communicate from distances of 4000 kilometers.

Whales and dolphins are capable of identifying the motion of fish between stormy waves, from long distances, and it is vital for them because they eat fish. Identification of the weak voices of the motion of fish, in the strong random noise of stormy waves is quite a simple thing for whales. They use their excellent incomparable hearing.

Whales and dolphins have sonar. Using their excellent hearing they can locate fish and other sea animals by echoes from their sonar signals, even within the sand at the bottom of the sea.

Their hearing includes the ears, which are sophisticated mechanical amplification devices and sophisticated deciphering centers in the brain. Both are exceptionally developed in whales, with their hearing that includes mechanical delicate amplification devices, which amplify the weakest voices to large vibrations in the ear, before transforming them into nerve signals going to the brain for deciphering.

Some whales dive for a few kilometers undersea to search for their food. The pressure there is hundreds of atmospheres. When they rise to the surface they must take a rest, during which they are vulnerable to being hit by ships when they are recovering from the dive and cannot escape the ship. There is no whale veterinarian and they usually die later from the hard-hit and then are sometimes pushed to the shore by the sea waves.

Sometimes a whale enters a shallow small bay during the tide, and if he failed to escape in time, he is trapped until the next tide and may die from exposure to the sun and the pressure of his huge weight on his tissues. Sometimes good people save such a whale.

But there were cases in which single whales or a few whales, or even large groups of whales, went up the shore intentionally and died.

There were theories that whales navigate according to magnetic fields that confused the whales and led them to the shore. But whale savers were astonished to observe the whales that they dragged out to the sea turning back and forcefully going on to the shore, where they died later.

This was not a navigation error, but a mystery. Why do the whales behave as if they were committing suicide?

Post-mortem operations found nothing, until the discovery that all the suicidal whales had a significant hemorrhage, but only in the ears.

Only then was it found that in each of the suicide cases, submarines or other navy ships operated sonar in the vicinity.

Radio includes a device for switching off. If it fails, one can take out the plug. Whales lack this option. They cannot switch off or decrease the high amplification of their sensitive hearing. The strong sonar sounds cause very strong mechanical vibrations in the mechanical amplification devices in the ears of the whales. This results in significant bleeding in their middle ear and its vicinity. No veterinarian is around to stop the bleeding.

The whale is not a fool; he knows that he will die from this. Even if he will not die from the bleeding, he will be deaf and unable to find food and will starve to death.

But why does the whale commit suicide on the shore? Why it is so important to the whale with wounded ears to die onshore, not in the water?

It was found that the strong sonar-induced vibrations cause the whale to have terrible pain in his ears, which he has no way to escape from, but only to go onshore. When going on shore, the whale does not hear the submarine sonar within the water. Then the terrible pain stops or weakens, which enables the whale to escape from the terrible torture of pain in his ears.

The whales do not just look as if they are committing suicide. In my opinion, the terrible truth is that the whales are indeed committing suicide. They cannot cope with the terrible pain induced by the sonar, which for them is the most terrible torture, worse than death.

Who will tell the whales that today young people want discotheques noisy as possible, oblivious to the damage to the hearing sense?

Associations for protecting the whales ask the navies not to train in or near regions of whale flocks.

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