facts about The Blue whale
The blue whale is the largest animal on Earth. With an average adult length of 100 feet and a weight of 160 tons! 160 tons translates to about three hundred thirty thousand pounds! This whale is also approximately 23 times heavier than the average African elephant. That’s equivalent to 2 city busses and longer than an NBA basketball court.
The blue whales have a “broad flat head”and “a small dorsal fin located in the last fourth of the body”, as NOAA writes. They have a pretty slender shape and really long bodies, with a blueish-grayish color that actually appears as a lighter blue underwater. There is also a mottling pattern - irregular spots, streaks, and marks - that can be somewhat unique and used to identify individual whales.
Blue whales are also baleen whales. That means they eat krill, and filter their food through baleen plates - strong and flexible material made out of keratin, which is actually the same proteins found in our hair and fingernails. Blue whales can eat up to 8,000 pounds of krill, which makes sense because of their giant size.
They migrate from Alaska to Mexico, at least that’s the route they take in the Pacific Ocean off of the US west coast. So they’ll go to Alaska and Canada to feed in the spring and summer, and then the coast of Mexico to breed during the cold months in the winter.
The females are pregnant for 11 months and can get pregnant every 2-4 years. Their calves - the whale babies - can gain around 200 pounds every single day when they’re nursing
The Encyclopedia Britannica states, “The blue whale is found alone or in small groups in all oceans, but populations in the Southern Hemisphere are much larger. In the Northern Hemisphere, blue whales can be seen regularly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off the coasts of Monterey, California, and Baja, California, Mexico.”
When a whale dies, their bodies fall to the ocean floor can create civilizations of deep-sea organisms. The whale bodies fall after death, reaching the Bathyal or Abyssal zone - deeper than 1,000 meters - and onto the ocean floor. Their carcass becomes a localized ecosystem that can sustain the organisms on the deep-sea floor, and is a huge source of life.
Questions to Ponder
What would happen if there were no more blue whales to sustain whole civilizations of organisms? Can you imagine how much the ecosystem of our oceans would suffer if blue whales were to disappear?
The blue whales have a “broad flat head”and “a small dorsal fin located in the last fourth of the body”, as NOAA writes. They have a pretty slender shape and really long bodies, with a blueish-grayish color that actually appears as a lighter blue underwater. There is also a mottling pattern - irregular spots, streaks, and marks - that can be somewhat unique and used to identify individual whales.
Blue whales are also baleen whales. That means they eat krill, and filter their food through baleen plates - strong and flexible material made out of keratin, which is actually the same proteins found in our hair and fingernails. Blue whales can eat up to 8,000 pounds of krill, which makes sense because of their giant size.
They migrate from Alaska to Mexico, at least that’s the route they take in the Pacific Ocean off of the US west coast. So they’ll go to Alaska and Canada to feed in the spring and summer, and then the coast of Mexico to breed during the cold months in the winter.
The females are pregnant for 11 months and can get pregnant every 2-4 years. Their calves - the whale babies - can gain around 200 pounds every single day when they’re nursing
The Encyclopedia Britannica states, “The blue whale is found alone or in small groups in all oceans, but populations in the Southern Hemisphere are much larger. In the Northern Hemisphere, blue whales can be seen regularly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off the coasts of Monterey, California, and Baja, California, Mexico.”
When a whale dies, their bodies fall to the ocean floor can create civilizations of deep-sea organisms. The whale bodies fall after death, reaching the Bathyal or Abyssal zone - deeper than 1,000 meters - and onto the ocean floor. Their carcass becomes a localized ecosystem that can sustain the organisms on the deep-sea floor, and is a huge source of life.
Questions to Ponder
What would happen if there were no more blue whales to sustain whole civilizations of organisms? Can you imagine how much the ecosystem of our oceans would suffer if blue whales were to disappear?