The scientific name of the blue whale is Balaenoptera musculus. This is the largest animal that ever existed. Join us to find out more information about this giant animal!
Blue whale's tongue is heavier than an elephant
A giant animal means that its body parts are also "huge", for example the tongue of the blue whale is estimated to average about 3 tons. While the average weight of an elephant is only about 2.7 tons, which means that the tongue of a blue whale is heavier than an elephant.
Even blue whales are superior in size to extinct creatures like dinosaurs. One of the largest dinosaur genera of the Mesozoic is Argentinosaurus, weighing only 90 tons, about the same size as the average blue whale. Whereas the long-necked dinosaur often seen in movies or science shows, Amphicoelias fragillimus, although reaching a length of 58 meters, is estimated to weigh 122.4 tons, still lighter than the blue whale.
The heart of a blue whale is the size of a car
The heart of a blue whale has long been rumored to be the size of a car. Its aorta is, according to some experts, even large enough for a human to swim through.
However, they had the opportunity to get a close look at the heart of this "huge" creature after the carcass of a blue whale washed up on the coast of Newfoundland, Canada last May. According to the BBC, the Royal Ontario Museum was commissioned to dissect the body of this 23.3-meter blue whale. The research team said that, most likely, the ill blue whale was hit by unusually thick ice sheets or drowned while trapped under the ice layers and could not receive oxygen.
With a weight of nearly 180kg, the blue whale's heart weighs as much as a large trailer tire and needs 3-4 people to lift it up. From the top of the aorta to the lowest chamber of the heart is 1.5 meters long.
Classify
Blue whales belong to the family Balaenopteridae, which includes humpback whales, fin whales, Bryde whales, Sei whales and Minke whales. The Balaenopteridae are believed to have diverged from other families of the suborder Mysticeti around the middle Oligocene (28 million years ago).
Blue whales are commonly classified as one of eight species of the genus Balaenoptera; one author placed it in a separate monotypic genus, Sibbaldus, but this was not recognized.[8] DNA analysis shows that blue whales are more closely related to Sei whales (Balaenoptera borealis) and Bryde whales (Balaenoptera brydei) than other Balaenoptera species, and closer to humpback whales (Megaptera) and gray whales (Eschrichtius). ) than minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata and Balaenoptera bonaerensis).
There are documented at least 11 cases of natural hybridization between blue whale/fin whale. Arnason and Gullberg describe the genetic distance between blue whales and fin whales as the distance between humans and gorillas. Researchers in Fiji believe they have captured a humpback/blue whale hybrid.
The first description of a blue whale comes from Robert Sibbald's Phalainologia Nova (1694). In September 1692, Sibbald found a stranded whale in the Firth of Forth—a male 24 m (78 ft) long.
The authors divide this species into three subspecies: B. m. musculus, North Atlantic and North Pacific populations, B. m. intermedia, in the Southern Ocean, B. m. brevicauda, the dwarf blue whale found in the Indian and southern Pacific Oceans, and B. m. indica, a problematic subspecies, is also found in the Indian Ocean, although B. m. indica was described earlier, it may be synonymous with B. m. brevicauda
Food
Although not possessing real teeth, but blue whales are still classified as carnivores. They live on a diet that consists mainly of mollusks, small crustaceans and sometimes small fish. Blue whales feed by swimming toward their prey, and the folds on their necks allow their throats to open wide, taking huge gulps of water into the food sacs created in their lower jaws and closing their mouths. The water is then pushed out, but thousands of tiny creatures are trapped by the baleen plates that filter their food and are then swallowed
Blue whales can consume up to 40 tons of prey daily during the summer months in cold, food-rich waters. Although Blue Whales eat a huge amount of food in the summer, they eat almost nothing when they move to warm waters in the winter.
An adult blue whale can consume up to 40 million mollusks a day. They always feed in areas with the highest mollusc densities, sometimes consuming up to 3,600 kilograms (7,900 lb) of phosphorus in a single day.[25] The energy requirement for an adult blue whale is about 1.5 million kilocalories. The food consumption of blue whales fluctuates with the seasons. They often have to consume large amounts of molluscs in the cold, food-rich waters of Antarctic waters before moving to warmer seas near the equator to breed.
Blue whales usually dive to 100 m (330 ft) to feed during the day while at night this activity mainly takes place near the surface of the water. Normally they can hunt continuously without returning to the surface for 10 minutes, however, there are recorded cases of continuous diving up to 21 minutes. Blue whales often inadvertently eat small fish, squid and other small crustaceans due to their hunting methods.
