The blue whale

STATUS:

Endangered

DESCRIPTION:

The blue whale is the largest animal ever to inhabit the Earth. This gentle giant has grayish-blue skin with light spots. It has about 300 to 400 baleen plates instead of teeth which it uses to strain food from the ocean water.

SIZE:

Measuring 70 to 80 feet in length (the longest recorded length was 106 feet), blue whales can weigh as much as 90 to 150 tons. The female is larger than the male.

POPULATION:

1,300 to 2,000, the population of blue whales is dangerously low.

LIFESPAN:

The lifespan of a blue whale is estimated to be 80 years.

HABITAT:

Blue whales are found throughout the world's oceans.

FOOD:

A blue whale can eat up to 7,715 pounds of krill (small shrimp-like organisms) per day!

BEHAVIOR:

Blue whales swim 14 miles per hour (with bursts as fast as 30 mph) and feed at depths of less than 330 feet (but can dive as deep as 1,640 feet). Dives last from 10 to 20 minutes. Usually they travel alone or in small groups of two to four, although off the coast of California some groups as large as 60 have been seen.

OFFSPRING:

Sexual maturity is reached between 5 to 10 years. Females give birth every two to three years to one calf. Gestation is 10 to 12 months; average calf is 23 feet long and weighs 4,440 pounds. A calf is fed by its mother for seven to eight months.

HISTORY:

Blue whales once were considered too difficult to hunt because of their speed and size. 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.

THREATS:

Blue whales face threats from entanglement in fishing nets, pollution, and illegal whaling.