How does the blue whale, the largest marine animal, survive?

There are more than 90 kinds of whales living in the ocean. Among them, the blue whale is the largest. If all the animals in the world were compared to a flock of sheep, it would be the camel among the sheep! Another analogy: an adult blue whale is as big as three houses. ah! What a behemoth.

Blue Whale

In order to see its size concretely, let us measure it with a ruler and weigh it with a scale. How long is it? Hey! It’s 40 meters long; how much does it weigh? ah! It weighs 130 tons. It is said that there are some that exceed this weight.

We can also dissect it and look at the weight of each part: about fifty or sixty tons of meat, twenty or thirty tons of fat, more than twenty tons of bones, internal organs (intestines, tripe, heart) , liver, lungs), three to four tons, tongue three to four tons, and several tons of blood.

Blue whale, also known as razor whale. Because of its large size, it only lives in the deep sea and rarely swims to offshore or shallow seas. In a year, it lives half of the year in the waters of the southern hemisphere and half of the year in the waters of the northern hemisphere. It is said that it prefers to live in the waters near Antarctica. What's the reason? There are a lot of lobsters and other plankton that it likes to eat.

Do you think it’s strange? Such a giant creature specializes in eating small things. Because it is big and eats small things, it can eat a lot at one time. Scientists have proven that it can suck dozens of tons of seawater into its stomach in one gulp, including one or two tons of lobsters and other plankton. As soon as it closed its mouth, the seawater was discharged from the space between the whiskers around the mouth and the two large exhaust holes above the nasal cavity.

Blue whales also give birth to children. The way of giving birth is very strange. In the spring season, male and female blue whales chase and court in the shallow waters of Antarctica. Female whales have a gestation period of 12 months (some can last as long as 24 months). When giving birth, the "couple" swims from the deep sea to the warm shallow bay, which is regarded as living in the "maternity hospital". When it arrives, the female whale floats on the sea with her belly facing up. The male whale stays beside his "beloved wife" and gently and constantly slaps his "wife" on the belly with his fins. After the female whale goes through labor pains several times, the "baby" is born. As soon as the baby whale leaves its mother's belly, it is 3 meters long and weighs 2 tons, and can travel with its parents. After 7 months, the female whale weans the baby whale; after 60 months, that is, 5 years later, when the baby whale becomes an "adult", it bids farewell to its "mother" and swims away to find a compatible partner. Went.

Whales are precious natural resources of our human society. Whale blubber can be used to refine various specifications of lubricants, medical cod liver oil and high-grade spices used in industrial production; whale meat can be made into cans and high-grade feed for poultry; whale skin can be used for tanning; whale baleen is a valuable material for making high-grade handicrafts. The raw material; whale bone, can be made into efficient organic fertilizer to increase food production.