The largest living animal? The biggest creature that has ever lived? It is far bigger than the biggest dinosaurs huge that it would take about 30 African elephants to counterbalance a single adult-Even its tongue weight four tones and its cavernous throat can hold the equivalent of eight small cars. Guess what is it? Ha-ha no doubt it is BLUE WHALE.
Blue whales are the largest animal known either living or extinct. The blue whale is found mostly in cold and temperate waters. It prefers deeper ocean waters to coastal waters. About six meters long at birth, they grow rapidly-at peak rates they can gain up to three kilos in an hour and consume up to 90 kilos a day of fat rich breast milk to reach up to 30 meters on maturity. Their social groupings are usually small, involving only pairs or a few individuals. They have no vocal cords, so their repetitive moaning, rumbling calls are made by vibrating nasal air sacs- a bit like the sound made when humans snore or blow their noses. Their calls are of such low frequency that they’re mostly inaudible to human ears, but they can reach 188 decibels and can be detected up to 400 kilometers away. So the blue whale is the loudest animal on earth!! Blue whales can live up to 70 years.
Blue whales are only eating very tiny things, no bigger than your pinky finger. Their favorite food is krill, (a type of shrimp-like marine invertebrate animal). An adult Blue Whale can eat up to 40 million krill in a day. The whales always feed in the areas with the highest concentration of krill, sometimes eating up to 3,600 kg (8,000 lb) of krill in a single day. Large scale commercial krill harvesting would deplete their sole food supply. Most krill is processed to produce fish food for use in aquariums; other uses include livestock or pet foods.
The Blue Whales is the largest animal ever to have existed. Blue Whales are difficult to weigh because of their size. Most Blue Whales killed by whalers were not weighed whole, but cut up into manageable pieces first. This caused an underestimate of the total weight of the whale, due to the loss of blood and other fluids.
Blue whales are still highly vulnerable. For centuries whales have been hunted for meat and as a source of valuable raw materials. A single blue whale could yield up to 120 barrels of whale oil, which was used in lamps and for making candles, among other uses. Blue whales are also threatened by pollution and global warming, the degradation of their habitat. They are exposed to contaminants, such as pesticides and industrial chemicals that end up in the ocean. Scientists are trying to find out how climate change might affect blue whales.
Pre-whaling, it’s estimated that there were more than 250,000 blue whales around the world. But between the 1860s and the 1960s, 90 percent were killed. The slaughter peaked in the 1930-31 season, when nearly 30,000 whales were killed. In the 1960s, the International Whaling Commission banned all hunting of blue whales. But blue whale meat still occasionally appears in some fish markets internationally. Today, it’s believed that there are around 10,000 to 25,000 blue whales on the planet.
