”A 15-ton scientific problem!”

Peter Teglberg Madsen:
“Good university teaching sparks students’ curiosity and their desire to explore. Our job is to develop independent students who dare to think for themselves. That’s why it’s so important that our degree programmes to have a close connection to research. And that we draw on contemporary research and show the students how dynamic research is and draw their attention to the many exciting aspects that we don’t fully understand yet. For example, how exactly a sperm whale uses its enormous nose to produce the clicking sounds that it uses when echolocating.”

“One of the biggest hurdles we have when new biology students start on the biology course is that they believe that we already know everything, and that they have no chance of discovering something new themselves. They’re used to truth as something that’s in a book and that couldn’t be otherwise. So it’s just incredible to be able to take the students to Henne Beach and show them a gigantic beached sperm whale and point to it’s huge head and say: ‘Here’s a 15-ton scientific problem! Because we actually have no idea how this works.”

“Of course, the students could also just read an article about it. But it’s just not the same. It always adds something to get your hands on things – and in the case of a dead sperm whale, to get the thing up your nose and on your clothes. To see research in action and get to try your hand at it. This applies both when we do experiments in the lab, and when we dissect a 15-ton sperm whale nose.”