Blue Whale |
The blue whale is a baleen whale. The Latin name for a blue whale is Balaenoptera Musculus. The blue whale is the biggest creature that has ever lived on Earth.
The blue whale can be 100 feet long and can weigh 200 tons. The blue whale spout can go 20 feet up into the air. The blue whale is the biggest baleen whale. It is equal in weight to 25 to 30 elephants. The blue whale is the biggest whale.
At birth, a blue whale calf is usually about 23 feet long. It weighs as much as 2 tons. A baby blue whale gains 200 pounds a day from nursing. When the blue whale calf is weaned (stops nursing) it may be almost 50 feet long and will add as much as 88 pounds per day. A blue whale mother usually has one calf at a time.
The blue whale has a small dorsal fin. It has two blowholes, like all baleen whales. It is a gulper whale. It has rorquals.
Blue whales can be found in all oceans. They like the cold water of the Arctic.
The blue whale can travel quickly. It can go up to 35 miles per hour. It is a very strong animal. Once, a blue whale that had been harpooned pulled a ninety foot boat for seven hours for a distance of fifty miles with the boats engines running in full reverse!
Breaching is when a whale jumps out of the water. A blue whale can not breach. The blue whale is too big to breach. It could never lift its body out of the water.
The blue whale eats krill and other plankton. Krill is shrimp-like plankton. The blue whale can eat four tons of krill a day.
The blue whale is an endangered species. In the 1920s, there were about two hundred thousand blues in the Antarctic alone. Today, there are only about ten thousand in the whole world. That means that only ten in 200 survived the past 76 years.
by Amelia, Bailey, Eliot