OK so I need you to picture a whale. you're probably thinking of something smooth and majestic right? like a humpback breaching in slow motion with a dramatic sunset behind it. Cool. Now throw that image away entirely because beaked whales are on a completely different wavelength.

These animals have strange beaks and bizarre bodies and they look absolutely nothing like what you probably imagine when you hear the word "whale." They are weird and wonderful and I respect them so much for it.

But here is where it gets absolutely unhinged. Beaked whales dive deeper than any other marine mammal on the planet. The confirmed record depth for a Cuvier's beaked whale is nearly 3,000 meters straight down into the pitch black ocean. That is about 9,800 feet. These little weirdos just... vanish into the darkness and I think that is incredible.

And the wildest part? We barely know anything about them. Because they spend so much time in the deep ocean, they are some of the most poorly understood mammals on Earth.

I just love that the ocean keeps producing animals like this. We think we know what a whale is and then the ocean says "actually, what about a strange-beaked bizarre-bodied deep-diving mystery creature that we basically never see?" and we just have to accept it. The world is so weird and I am so here for it.