By Mindy Weisberger, Senior
Writer | July 24, 2017 06:12am ET
Sleeping dogs lie, but sleeping
whales … "stand" on their tails? That was the scene recently glimpsed
by a diver in the Caribbean, at least, when the photographer encountered a
group of sperm whales napping together, all of them suspended tails-down in the
water.
Photographer Franco Banfi was
free diving — underwater diving without a breathing apparatus — on Jan. 28 off
the coast of Dominica, an island in the Caribbean Sea between Martinique and
Guadalupe, when he spied six still and silent sperm whales drifting in their
upright postures at a depth of around 65 feet (20 meters).
Researchers first saw this
unusual sleep behavior in sperm whales in 2008, describing it in a study
published in January of that year in the journal
Current Biology. The scientists in that study found that sperm
whales dozed in this upright drifting posture for about 10 to 15 minutes at a
time, and the whales did not breathe or move at all during their naps, the
study authors reported.
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