Home âº Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling the World. Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling the World. This report has been removed from our site. âSeeing, Hearing, and Smelling the World,â originally published in 1995, was the fifth in a series of reports about biomedical science. We have removed this content from our website because the information was not as current as we would like.
Mystery of how sperm whales hold their breath for 90 minutes solved as scientists discover the key is unique protein in their blood. The sperm whale is able to hold its breath underwater for up to 90 minutes because of a unique protein in its blood, an international team of scientists has discovered. The huge mammal will often dive up to 3km deep under water for more than an hour in search of food.
This protein is located inside muscle cells. In humans it makes up for only a very small percentage of the muscle mass. This percentage changes drastically in the animals with the need to hold their breath and it goes up to 45% of the muscle mass in sperm whales, animals that can hold their breath for up to two hours.he more the animal wants to stay under water, the longer the period it has to stay at the surface for the gas exchanges to take place. A dolphin needs to breathe a few times (about two to four minutes) to stay submerged 20 to 30 minutes.