The blue whale holds the record for being the largest creature on Earth. It is the largest animal that has ever lived even bigger than the dinosaurs.
What does a blue whale look like? The color of the blue whale is true to its name. The back of this animal is grey/blue with spots. The blue whale has two blowholes on its back that allow it to breathe. A splashguard is in front of the blowholes. The blue whale also has a small fin on its back, two flippers on its side and a huge, wide tail. From the blue whale s mouth to half way under its body are large grooves called throat grooves. These grooves act as filters when feeding.
The blue whale grows to an amazing length. Blue whales have been reported to be as long as 110 feet long the same the heart of a blue whale can weigh up to 1,000 pounds. This is the same weight of a sports car. length as four buses parked in a line.
though the blue whale is huge, some of its body parts are not. Its eyes are the size of a small cup, and its ears are even smaller about the size of the point of a pencil.
Such a large baby needs a lot of nourishment. A calf can drink 120 to 130 gallons of its mother s milk everyday. 120 human baby bottles. During the months that the mother blue whale feeds her baby, she eats nothing herself. gallons of milk is the same amount as 4,000
A baby blue whale is called a calf. A blue whale calf can grow 1,000 times as fast as a human baby. A whale calf barely a few weeks old is already ten feet long and weighs nearly a ton. Just like in human families, blue whales communicate with each other. Mother and baby whales signal to each other by slapping the surface of the water. Fin slaps are strong enough to be heard by the other whales even above the roar of the ocean.
What do blue whales eat? The adult blue whale eats small shrimp like crustaceans called krill. Teams of whales dive into a swarm of krill, spiraling around each other in close coordination and blasting air from their blowholes to form a net of bubbles. This net traps the large groups of krill and the whales dive in with an open mouth. In a single gulp, a blue whale takes tons of water into its ballooning throat and separates out the krill by using holes in different parts of its mouth. The water goes through the holes, and the krill are left in the whale s mouth for it to eat.
Adult blue whales communicate with each the noises are so low pitched that it is out other, too. The sounds they make can be of a humans hearing range. Like heard hundreds of miles away by other whales, but not by humans! Although scientists believe that the blue whale s call is louder than any other animal s, bears, whales feed all summer long to store fat for the cold months ahead. A blue whale can eat up to 4 million krill in a single day.
The blue whale s eating (and existence) is supported by a fragile food chain. Plankton (small animals and plants) feeds the Krill This huge animal also has an amazing life span. It is believed whales can live as long as 110 years! which in turn feeds the Blue Whale.
Blue whales can be found in the northern part of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean as well as the waters of Antarctica.
The blue whale is a real head banger! Blue Whales found in the Antarctic use their massive heads to break a path through the ice as they swim.
Blue whales are considered to be social animals. They usually swim in groups of more have been reported. A group of whales is called a pod. two or three however; groups of 60 or
A pod of blue whales swim very slowly but they can reach speeds of up to 19 miles an hour if they need to. In the early part of the 20th century, up to 275,000 blue whales lived in our oceans. Today, it is believed that only 9,000 blue whales remain on the planet.
The whales' only natural predator is the Orca. Some Blue Whales have scars resulting from Orca attacks.
A blue whale's call is the loudest of any animal. It can travel for hundreds of miles. Our ears can't hear it because it's such a low pitched rumble.