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Blue Whales
Blue whales are baleen whales.
The Blue whale is the largest animal ever to inhabit the Earth! At up to 35 metres long and 130 tonnes, it is bigger than any of the dinosaurs were.
Blue whales are found in all the world's oceans. They have grey-blue skin with light spots. They generally spend winters in warmer temperate to subtropical areas, and migrate to the icy polar regions in spring and summer.
Some Blue whale facts:
| Females are larger than males. |
| Blue whales can live for about 80 years. |
| Newborn Blue whale calves are 8 metres long and 2,700 to 3,600 kg. |
| Calves gain about 90kg a day, and when they stop feeding from their mothers 7 months later, they are 18 metres long and weigh about 23 tonnes! |
| An adult blue whale
eats up to 3,600 kg of krill each day for about 120 days. |
| It is estimated to take 1,000 kg of food to fill a Blue whale's stomach. |
Conservation Status and Threats
Blue whales are classified as endangered.
It is estimated that there are less than 2,000 left.
Threats to the survival of Blue whales are:
entanglement in fishing nets,
pollution,
illegal whaling.
They were once considered too difficult to hunt because of their speed and tremendous size. However, with the introduction of factory ships and the harpoon gun in the 1920s, Blue whales were hunted intensively. By the 1960s they were nearly extinct.
This site
has some pictures and a video (you need Quicktime) of Blue whales
http://www.earthwindow.com/blue.html
For more information about the Blue whale and also has a drawing that shows how big a Blue whale is compared with an adult person
http://www.omplace.com/omsites/discover/BLUE/blueg.html
Back to Baleen whales
If you use any part of
this, acknowledge it in your bibliography like this:
Whales
(2002).
[Online], Available: www.kidcyber.com.au
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Updated October 2007