WORLD'S LARGEST ANIMAL

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.