The constant search for food occupies most of the whale’s life. The largest whales need several tons of food each day to survive. But strangely enough, the largest whales also eat the smallest prey; some whales are more than a hundred million times bigger than the tiny creatures they swallow.
The kind of food a cetacean eats can differ greatly from one species to another. Some whales travel across the surface (or the bottom) of the ocean in search of small or even microscopic sea creatures called plankton, which they gulp down in huge numbers. Other whales use their teeth to eat a variety of larger sea creatures, ranging in size from small fish or squid all the way up to seals and walruses. Despite the legends of shipwrecked sailors being devoured by sea monsters, whales do not eat humans.
Many cetaceans have developed efficient ways of capturing their prey. Some produce streams of bubbles, which act like a net to encircle schools of small fish. Others hunt in groups called pods, saving energy by working as a team to capture enough food to feed the entire group. Sometimes, a hungry pod can eat a school of fish or a small herd of seals in a minute or so -- now that’s fast food!
