Early one Friday morning in December 2006 I went with some friends to see the body of a sperm whale that had washed up at Roseisle beach. Roseisle is about a forty-minute drive from the village of Spey Bay, where I lived during fieldwork. This area of Scotland features, amongst other unusual wildlife, a resident population of bottlenose dolphins, and sightings of whales and dolphins are quite common in the area, though to see a sperm whale is rare, as they usually keep to the open seas....