The biggest animals on the planet: blue whales

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

The largest animals in the world's oceans, blue whales, reach truly gigantic sizes - up to 33 meters, and these giants can weigh more than 150 tons. For comparison, let's say that 50 African elephants weigh the same. For its active existence, the animal needs 1 million calories every day. The blue whale belongs to the baleen whales (a genus of minke whales), its typical diet is small fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, plankton and krill.

Finding this amount of food is not difficult if you know where there are a lot of crustaceans. On the so-called "feeding fields", where the highest concentration of plankton, you can see several whales at once, although they usually do not gather more than 3 individuals in a group.

Blue whales are distributed throughout the world's oceans from the Arctic to the Antarctic, with several subspecies:

• northern;
• southern;
• dwarf;
• Indian.

The first two species prefer the cool waters of the ocean, while the dwarf and Indian are found in tropical seas. Leading a solitary lifestyle, these mammals have developed their own original way of communication. Sometimes adultsform small groups, although even in such small communities they keep apart.

Great blue whale has no sensitive sense of smell and almost no vision, but he manages to communicate with the help of "singing". Calling sounds are made by males during the mating season. This singing is more like a terrible howl that can be heard at a distance of 1600 km. Females also sometimes communicate, but only with their cub. According to scientists, blue whales analyze the received sounds, since this is the only way for them to communicate with the outside world. In addition, they note the intelligence and intelligence of these animals.

The breeding season comes once every two years. It takes 10-11 months to bear offspring. After the birth of the baby, the female feeds him with milk for 7-8 months, at the end of this period the weight of the young whale is more than 20 tons, and the length is more than 20 meters. At this time, part of the skin of the cub is already affected by marine parasites. Ongoing research has identified a significant number of internal and external parasites of the whale. During the stay on the feeding fields, the adult animal is covered with diatoms, of which scientists have counted 31 species on one whale alone. From this, the skin of a mammal becomes yellow-green in color, numerous mollusks live in the same place, right on the body of the animal.

For many years, blue whales have been exterminated by humans. For the sake of extracting whalebone, fat and meat, people hunted these giants, reducing the population by 100 times. At the beginning of the 20th century, uncontrolled fishing led to the fact thatnow there are no more than 1,500 individuals left on the planet. Forecasts of scientists are disappointing: this species can no longer be saved from extinction from the face of the Earth. No more than 100 adult whales currently exist in the North Atlantic.

Their extinction continues due to the dumping of waste into the ocean, oil leakage and active human intervention in nature. Too slow natural growth greatly inhibits the resumption of the population, and keeping in artificial conditions is impossible due to the size of the mammal.