The blue whale, that almost legendary animal that is known throughout the world for its great size and weight, a blue whale is a very colorful animal that has been the object of curiosity and study for generations.
This whale was about to disappear last century, since the whalers had created sophisticated technology to hunt these animals, so they began to hunt them without mercy due to their large size, for which they could get tons of whale oil. However, in the middle of the last century it was declared a protected species, with only 12,000 specimens worldwide.
To say what the blue whale is like, it is necessary to explain many things related to it, its size, its activity, its feeding must be explained, since it must be explained step by step so that it can be perfectly understood.
What do you need for the blue whale?
- Pay close attention to this article.
Blue Whale Instructions
- Size: The size is the most striking thing about this animal, the size is between 20 and 30 meters in length(like a 10-storey skyscraper more or less) and the weight varies between 100 and 150 tons of weight (100,000 kilograms), which makes it a true colossus of the ocean, already having only 600 kilos of weight in its heart. This large size makes it safe from many predators, making it impossible for it to be attacked by almost none (only the orca, the human being and a pack of very brave sharks).
- Family: Despite living in the water, the blue whale is a mammal, specifically from the cetacean family, among which are killer whales, dolphins, whales… The blue whale has what is called baleen(it does not have teeth) which is used to retain food when releasing the water, it is viviparous, and that is to say that the young are born in the womb of the mother, internal fertilization and of the fin whale family.
- Food: The blue whale, being so extremely large, needs tons of food if it wants to survive in the ocean. Its main food is an animal from the crustacean family called krill, which it eats in large quantities, eating about 40,000 kilos of krill daily, getting more or less one and a half million kilocalories (human beings need 2000). The way to eat them is to go through a school of krill opening its mouth; once it captures them it lets out the excess water, retains the krill with its barbs and finally swallows them. To say that sometimes the blue whale eats some other type of aquatic animal, always accidentally since it has a huge mouth and swallows and swallows without looking where it goes.
- Reproduction: As I have already said, they are viviparous and its fertilization is internal, the sexual maturity of the blue whale occurs at 7 years of age, its delivery is simple (a single calf) and gestation lasts almost a year. After giving birth they have to wait 2 years to have another calf, which are born weighing 7000 kilos and measuring 8 meters, feeding on the mother’s milk for 9 months and from then on eating krill like adults.
- Health: The blue whale is an animal that is at the top of the food chain, due to its large size it is rare for animals to attack the blue whale. Only old whales are in danger from killer whales and pods of sharks. Under normal conditions, the blue whale reaches 120 years of age with hardly any health problems throughout its life. The only great danger for the blue whale continues to be the human being, due to poaching, oil spills and man-made structures in the ocean in the natural habitat of blue whales.
- Relationship: The blue whale usually lives either alone or in small groups of 4 or 5 animals, they live in the Antarctic Ocean area, in some areas of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, before they lived in more places but since they have been almost eradicated they live only in these isolated places. The whale comes out to breathe every 20 minutes, releasing the famous jet at the end; they usually swim at 20 km/h but can reach 50 km/h if they feel threatened despite their large size.
Blue Whale Tips
- The largest animal in history: As a final curiosity to tell you that we are facing the largest animal in the entire history of planet earth. Not even dinosaurs and other extinct primitive species can be compared to the size of the blue whale, which is like a huge skyscraper, being twice the size of the largest dinosaur (spinosaur) and three times the largest mammal. (paraceratherium)
