A blue whale has pleats of skin and blubber below its mouth that extend to its belly, forming a stretchy, cavernous extension of its mouth. However, once abundant in all of the world’s oceans, by the end of the 19th century, the blue whale was hunted nearly to extinction by whaling fleets. The species has been protected from commercial whaling since the mid-1960s. A blue whale aorta (the main blood vessel) alone is large enough for a human to crawl through. Researchers based in the US and Canada studied the giant mammals to find out how much energy they needed to fuel their lunging feeding dives. "It's incredible.". "They go from being a streamlined missile with their mouths closed, to just ballooning right up," said Dr Shadwick. A blue whale's heart alone is about the size of a small car and weighs about 1,000 pounds. Despite the size of its mouth, the dimensions of its throat are such that a Blue Whale cannot swallow an object wider than a beach ball. The longest blue whale ever recorded was a 108-foot adult female caught during whaling efforts in Antarctica! This ability is thanks to the whales' very unusual anatomy. The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is a baleen whale (contains special structures in its mouth that enable it to filter food from the water) of the subfamily Balaenopteridae, and ranges in length from 12 to 16 m with a bodyweight of approximately 36 000 kg.On 12 December 2012 a humpback whale became stranded on a sandbank near Texel on the Dutch coast. "But they're not under water for very long considering how big they are - it's something of a paradox.". How about quantum mechanics? With each mouthful, the whale can hold up to 5,000 kg of water and plankton. Every major habitat has been exploited by mammals that swim, fly, run, burrow, glide, or climb.…. Updates? The blue whale has a wide head, a small dorsal fin located near the fluke, and 80–100 long grooves running lengthwise down the throat and chest. It then filters out tiny marine creatures through a special comb-like structure in its mouth called baleen. When a blue whale opens its mouth near a school of krill, water gushes in. Even dinosaurs didn’t reach that size – for instance, it’s nearly 20 times heavier than a T. rex ! How well do you know astronomy? Having forced the water out of its mouth, the whale licks these bristles with its fleshy tongue. Its mouth is large enough to hold up to 90 tonnes of food and water. The largest accurately measured blue whale was a 29.5-metre female that weighed 180 metric tons (nearly 200 short [U.S.] tons), but there are reports of 33-metre catches that may have reached 200 metric tons. The lower surfaces of the flippers are lighter gray or white in some instances. A blue whale's tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant. A blue whale’s tongue weighs around 2.7 tonnes (3.0 short tons) – as much as an African elephant, and , when fully expanded, its mouth is large enough to hold up to 90 tonnes (99 short tons) of food and water. 2. The blue whale is the Largest animal ever, some specimens weighing in at a colossal 200 tonnes (440,000 lb), although 100–150 tonnes (200,000–300,000 lb) is the average. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. This quiz will take you through 36 of the hardest questions from Britannica’s most popular quizzes about the sciences. During a dive, the blue whale may engage in a series of turns and 360° rolls to locate prey and rapidly reorient its body to sweep up large concentrations of krill in a single open-mouthed lunge. The aorta of the blue whale is so large, that a human can literally crawl through it like a tunnel. The maximum weight of one blue whale is the same weight as about 40 African elephants. And yet, despite their massive size, a blue whale eats a tiny shrimplike animal called krill. When feeding, this whale measuring up to about 88 feet (26.8 meters) long and 70 tons increases its swimming speed, opens its mouth and lunges in the ocean. The heart of one blue whale was recorded at nearly 700 kg (about 1,500 pounds). "It's equivalent to if you could shove your hand into your mouth and under the skin right down to your belly button," explained Dr Shadwick. - Blue whale mouths are huge, too – they can swallow a volume of water larger than themselves. Young are weaned after seven to eight months, when they have reached a length of about 15 metres (about 49 feet). The blue whale is a cetacean and is classified scientifically within the order Cetacea as a rorqual (family Balaenopteridae) related to the gray whale (family Eschrichtiidae) and the right whales (Balaenidae and Neobalaenidae) of the baleen whale suborder, Mysticeti. The whales - the largest animals on the planet - filter the krill they eat from these huge watery mouthfuls. Whale-watching boat alongside a blue whale (. On occasion, orcas will attack blue whales as a group, focusing particularly on calves. About 100 people can fit in a blue whale's mouth. Baleen is similar to bristles and consists of keratin, the same substance found in human fingernails, skin and hair. By comparison the average blue whale penis is nearly 3 times the size of that of a sei whale. The blue whale has been called the sulfur-bottom whale because of the yellowish underside of some individuals that is reminiscent of the pale yellow colour of that chemical element; this coloration is imparted by certain algae (diatoms) living on the whale’s body. You and 400 of your friends could fit in its mouth. Are they vegetarians? The number of species, although still large, has declined considerably. They report their findings in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The blue whale heart is the size of a small family car. Its mouth contains up to 800 plates of short, wide, black baleen, or “whalebone,” with thick, coarse bristles used for catching food. Although the blue whale is a deep-water hunter, as a mammal, it must come to the surface of the sea to breathe. The animals then quickly lost speed as they inflated and took on the weight of large volumes of water. These magnificent marine mammals rule the oceans at up to 100 feet long and upwards of 200 tons . Despite the size of its mouth, the dimensions of its throat are such that a blue whale cannot swallow an object wider than a beach ball. The mechanism behind modern whale migration is debated. Baleen is a filter-feeding system inside the mouths of baleen whales.To use baleen, the whale first opens its mouth underwater to take in water. The tongue is then pushed toward the bottom of the mouth and, under pressure, is turned back on itself like the finger of a glove, which forms a pocket that can hold water. Its heart weighs 600 kilograms … Longer dives would maximise the amount of food they consumed and possibly offset the great energy cost of each dive. The size of a blue whale is 89 feet for females and 82 feet for males. The fully open mouth would be big enough for another blue whale to swim into, said Dr Shadwick. The length of a blue whale is equal to 3 school buses. …whales—fast-swimming species such as the blue whale (, The blue whale mainly devours small reddish shrimp called krill, while the formidable killer whale feeds on salmon, seals, and sharks. The blue whale is found alone or in small groups in all oceans, but populations in the Southern Hemisphere are much larger. - A baby blue whale is about the size of 2 minivans. Imagine a creature the size of 2 1/2 school buses laid end-to-end and you'll get a sense of the size of the blue whale. The whale. Corrections? She wears a long white ribbed sweater that covers the majority of her upper bo… Twenty-five elephants in a row are equal to one blue whale in size. Blue whales can weigh over 100 tons (99,800 kg). Jeremy Goldbogen from University of California San Diego led the study. A blue whale’s heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and pumps 9 tonnes (10 US tons) of blood through the massive blue whale body. 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