Sperm whale of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, the largest international association of marine mammal scientists in the world, officially uses "Physeter macrocephalus" when publishing their definitive list of marine mammal species. The sperm whale is the largest toothed whale, with adult males measuring up to long and weighing up to . By contrast, the second largest toothed whale (Baird's Beaked Whale) measures and weighs up to . The Nantucket Whaling Museum has a -long jawbone. The museum claims that this individual was long; the whale that sank the "Essex" (one of the incidents behind "Moby-Dick") was claimed to be . A
Cuvier's beaked whale another that had stranded itself at Aresquiès, Hérault, in May of the same year, and found the two to be identical. There is no connection between Cuvier's beaked whale and the mythical Ziphius, or "Water-Owl", a creature in medieval folklore which had the characteristics of both an owl and a fish. Its dorsal fin was said to be sword-shaped, and pierced ship's hulls, while the beak was said to resemble an owl's head. The body of Cuvier's beaked whale is robust and cigar-shaped, similar to those of other beaked whales, and can be difficult to distinguish from many of the