Blue whales are
considered to be the
largest animals that have
ever existed
on Earth. They are part
of the baleen
whales category and the
rorquals
family, along with the
humpback
whale, the minke whale,
the fin whale
and the Bryde's whale. A
blue whale
can reach almost 30
meters in length
and it can have a weight
of more than
200 tons. A blue whale
baby can drink
up to 590 liters of milk
and it can add
up to 90 kg to its weight
daily. This
might be shocking but the
heart of a
blue whale has the size
of a car and its
arteries are so big that
a child could
sit on them.
A medium blue whale can
weight 160
tons which is the
equivalent to 30
elephants or 160 people
that weight 90
kg each. But despite
their huge
dimensions, the eyes of a
blue whale
are just the size of a
cup of tea, and
their external ear is
just as big as the
tip of a pencil.
Adult blue whales eat a
lot of food, and
their mouths can keep
45,999 liters of
water, the equivalent of
256,000
glasses.
But blue whales don't
swallow all this
water, they use their
baleen plates to
filter it and extract
krill and copepods
which are their main
menu. They can reach speeds of 35km per
hour.
Blue whales have been
victims of
excessive hunting over
the years and
they were on the verge of
extinction,
although they were not
very easy to
kill.
They are found in all
oceans. The largest
populations of blue
whales can be found in
the Southern
hemisphere, in the North
Pacific and
the North Atlantic Ocean.
Sexual maturity lasts
from 5 to 10
years and a female can
give birth to a
baby blue whale every two
or three
years, Babies are born in
warm waters
during winter days.
Pregnancy lasts
from 10 to 12 months.
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