Reaching a maximum confirmed length of 29.9 meters (98 feet) and weight of 173 tonnes (190 tons), the Blue Whale is the largest animal known to have ever existed.
The blue whale’s long and slender body can be various shades of grayish-blue dorsally and somewhat lighter underneath.
The blue whale is a marine mammal belonging to the baleen whale suborder of Mysticeti.
Mass: 50,000 – 150,000 kg (Adult)
Gestation period: 10 – 12 months
Lifespan: 80 – 90 years (In the wild)
Class: Mammalia
Order: Cetartiodactyla
Family: Balaenopteridae
There are five subspecies of Blue Whale recognized by the Society for Marine Mammalogy's Committee on Taxonomy:
B. m. musculus in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia in the Southern Ocean, B. m. brevicauda (the pygmy blue whale) in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, B. m. indica in the Northern Indian Ocean, and B. m. unnamed subspecies. in the waters off Chile.
The blue whale diet consists almost exclusively of euphonious (krill).
They weigh somewhere between 100-150 tons (200,000-300,000 pounds/90,700-136,000 kilograms) as adults.
In comparison, the African bush elephant, the largest living land animal, only weighs 7 tons (14,000 pounds/63,000 kilograms). So an adult blue whale can weigh as much as a mind blowing 14-21 adult African elephants.
The heart only weigh about 400 pounds (181 kilograms).
When a blue whale exhales, the spray from its blowhole shoots nearly 30 feet into the air.
However, despite their large size blue whales do not eat people. Actually they couldn't eat a person no matter how hard they tried to. ... Even if they tried to swallow a human whole they wouldn't be able to fit a person down their throat.
Blue whales won't even attempt to eat small marine mammals let alone a human. They only live on those little kills.
Female blue whales give birth to a single calf every 2-3 years. Calves weigh as much as 3 tons (6,000 pounds/2721 kilograms) when they’re born.
On average, they’re between 23 and 25 feet (7-7.6 meters) long.
Baby blue whale calves are the biggest babies in the world.
They are as large as an adult orca when they are born.
Calves outweigh the average American car by over 2,000 pounds and are as long as an ambulance.
Amazingly, they gain about 250 pounds (115 kilograms) a day while they’re nursing. That’s the equivalent of adding adding the mass of a large adult man, someone the size of Anthony Joshua or Gentle Jack, to their weight every day.
Interestingly, these gentle giants are debated as the loudest animals on earth. They can produce sounds that are over 188 decibels.
To put that in perspective, jet engines only produce sounds up to 150 decibels.
188 decibels at close range is more than enough to burst your eardrums.
In term of speed, Blue Whales can get up to about 31 miles per hour (50 kilometers per hour), which is pretty respectable.
Their normal traveling speed is somewhere around 12 miles per hour (20 kilometers) and they slow down to about 5 miles per hour (8 kilometer
Blue whales have few predators but are known to fall victim to attacks by sharks and killer whales, and many are injured or die each year from impacts with large ships.
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