Scientists Capture the First Known Footage of Sperm Whales Headbutting, a Long-Debated Behavior That Inspired ‘Moby-Dick’

Engaging in “rough play” might help young males practice for future headbutting contests in which they compete for mates

Kunjal Bastola | Editorial Intern

March 25, 2026

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In the epic novel Moby-Dick, the titular character—an albino sperm whale—rams into and sinks a ship. Herman Melville’s fictional tale was inspired by an actual event that occurred in 1820, when one of these massive marine mammals slammed its head into the whaling ship Essex near the Galápagos Islands.

Despite several anecdotal reports of headbutting behavior, scientists have never officially documented it—until now. A drone helped them film three instances of young sperm whales smashing headfirst into their peers, according to a study published March 23 in the journal Marine Mammal Science. 

“It was really exciting to observe this behavior, which we knew had been hypothesized for such a long time, but not yet documented and described systematically,” lead author Alec Burslem, an ecophysiologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, says in a statement.

Sperm whales are elusive animals, and researchers have long debated how often they might headbutt. While some suspected that it’s a common practice among males competing for resources, such as mates, others thought the behavior was likely rare, because it could damage head structures needed for echolocation and communication.

So Burslem and his colleagues investigated using a drone to record videos. From 2020 to 2022, they captured three observations of the rarely seen behavior in whales near the Azores archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Portugal, and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, near Spain.

During the first observation, two small whales—either females or juvenile males—swam toward each other and bumped their heads together. The second instance involved a young male with an erection ramming his head into the side of a female. And in the third example, a male repeatedly headbutted another whale.

The researchers don’t know exactly why the animals engaged in the behavior, but they suspect some of it might be “rough play” to help young males practice for headbutting contests they might participate in when they’re older. What’s more, the roughhousing may harm group dynamics, because it could annoy adult females within sperm whales’ matrilineal societies, the researchers write in the paper. Therefore, it might play a role in male whales transitioning to solitary lives as they age.

Headbutting Sperm Whales

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But are the headbutts hurting the animals? The whales rammed into one another at speeds ranging from about 2.6 feet per second to 14.8 feet per second, generating forces that the authors describe as “mild to considerable.”

While the observed forces are impressive, they probably didn’t result in severe damage, says Robert Harcourt, a marine biologist at Macquarie University in Australia, who was not involved in the study, to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Peter de Kruijff.

Additionally, soft tissue and an oil-filled organ fill much of a sperm whale’s head, and the brain and other important organs sit farther back, Catherine Kemper, a marine mammal specialist at the South Australian Museum who was also not involved in the study, tells the outlet.

“The head is up to 40 percent of the body length, so quite a weapon, if they want to use it as such,” she says.

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Kunjal Bastola is an editorial intern with Smithsonian magazine.