🐾 Whale

Whale

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Who it is

• Scientific name: Balaenoptera musculus
• Family & relatives: It is a baleen whale in the rorqual family, related to fin and humpback whales.
• How to spot it: A long, slender, bluish-gray whale with a mottled skin and a small fin far back on its body.

Its body & abilities

• Size: It is the largest animal ever known to have lived, reaching up to about 30 meters long.
• Weight: It can weigh up to about 150,000 to 190,000 kilograms.
• Body & adaptations: Instead of teeth it has plates of baleen that strain food, and pleated throat grooves that expand while feeding.
• Top speed: It usually cruises around 20 kilometers per hour but can sprint faster when alarmed.
• Strength: Its heart is the largest of any animal, and its low calls are among the loudest sounds any animal makes.
• Senses: It has good hearing tuned to low sounds that travel across whole oceans.
• Growing up: A single calf is born large and grows incredibly fast on its mother's rich milk.

Where it lives

• Habitat: It lives in the open ocean, feeding in cool productive waters and breeding in warmer seas.
• Where in the world: Found in all the world's major oceans.
• Territory: It migrates long distances between cold feeding grounds and warm breeding areas.

What it eats

• Diet: It is a filter feeder that eats almost entirely tiny shrimp-like krill.
• Favorite foods: It can eat several tons of krill in a single day during feeding season.
• How it hunts: It lunges into a swarm of krill, gulps a huge mouthful of water, then pushes the water out through its baleen.

How it behaves

• How it moves: It swims with steady up-and-down strokes of its broad tail flukes.
• When it is active: It feeds intensely in summer and travels toward warmer waters in winter.
• Family life: It usually travels alone or in small loose groups.
• How it talks: It communicates with deep, powerful calls that carry for hundreds of kilometers.
• Babies: Mothers give birth to one calf every two to three years after about a year of pregnancy.

Its place in nature

• Role in nature: As a huge krill eater it helps cycle nutrients that fertilize the whole ocean.
• Conservation: It is listed as Endangered after past whaling, and is slowly recovering under protection.
• Dangers: Adults have few natural threats besides orcas; ship strikes and entanglement are the main dangers today.

Life & legacy

• How long it lives: It can live 80 to 90 years or more.
• In our culture: It stands as a symbol of ocean conservation and the wonder of the natural world.
• Where to see it: Whale-watchers see them off California, Sri Lanka, and in the Gulf of California in Mexico.
• Fun fact: A newborn blue whale is already about 7 meters long, longer than most cars.