{"id":595079,"date":"2026-08-16T14:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T14:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/595079\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T14:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T14:16:08","slug":"what-animal-has-the-biggest-brain-clue-its-5-times-bigger-than-a-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/595079\/","title":{"rendered":"What animal has the biggest brain? Clue \u2013 it&#8217;s 5 times bigger than a human&#8217;s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That award for the animal has the biggest brain goes to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/marine-animals\/sperm-whale-facts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sperm whale<\/a>. The average weight of an adult male sperm whale\u2019s brain is 7.8kg compared to 1.4kg for a human\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>The sperm whale\u2019s signature shape makes it instantly recognisable, particularly its squarish head that seems disproportionately big \u2013 it comprises up to a third of the whale\u2019s body length.<\/p>\n<p>However, it\u2019s another component of this vast cranium that historically meant the sperm whale was hunted. <\/p>\n<p>The spermaceti organ is filled with a pale, waxy liquid, formerly prized by whalers. It\u2019s believed to be involved in buoyancy control and a sophisticated acoustic sensory system that enables these gregarious whales to relate to their complex, three-dimensional environment, and to form intricate social bonds.<\/p>\n<p>Main image: \u00a9 Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That award for the animal has the biggest brain goes to the sperm whale. The average weight of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-595079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}