The passage discusses the immense size of Blue whales, the largest animals to have ever lived on Earth. It mentions that they are larger than dinosaurs, including Ocean-Giants like Megalodon and Mosasaur. The text explores the concept of measuring relative size using weight rather than length and goes on to compare Blue whales with other animals, both living and extinct.
It delves into Blue whale biology, their feeding habits (filter feeding), and the importance of energy efficiency in their gigantism. The passage also highlights the challenges of growing to such enormous sizes in the ocean ecosystem and how their evolution was influenced by changes in the ocean's ecosystem during the Pleistocene ice age.
Overall, the text provides a comprehensive overview of Blue whales, their size, feeding habits, and the factors that contributed to their gigantism in evolutionary history.
1. Blue whales are the largest animals that have ever lived, surpassing dinosaurs and other ocean giants like Megalodon and Mosasaur .
2. Blue whales are not the longest animals of all time. Comparing the size of many anatomically different animals can be misleading .
3. When comparing the size of many anatomically different animals, weight is the easiest and most fair measurement to use .
4. The largest living land animal is the African Bush Elephant .
5. Among the extinct animals, the largest Sauropods, the Titanosaurs, were significantly larger .
6. The largest Sauropods, the Titanosaurs, included famous examples like Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus .
7. Southern hemisphere blue whales are generally larger than northern hemisphere animals .
8. The longest whale measured by scientists was a female 29.9 meters (98 ft.) long that weight about 180 metric tons .
9. The heart of a Blue Whale is the largest known in any animal .
10. Blue Whales have a gigantic mouth which allows it to take in huge volumes of water to filter for food .
11. Blue whales dive below the surface to the depth of one-two hundred meters and then lunge into swarms of tiny krill above them .
12. During a typical 10 minute dive, a blue whale makes on average 3-4 of these lunges .
13. A single dive can provide enough food to cover the whale’s daily energy requirement of 1.5 million calories .
14. At birth, blue whale calves are with a length of 7m and a weight almost 3 metric tons already as big as an adult great white .
15. The milk they drink has a very high fat concentration of 30-50 % which gives it an almost toothpaste-like consistency .
16. A calf drinks between 200-400 litres of milk a day – that’s around 90 gallons .
17. By the time the calf is weaned, 7-9 months later, it will have reached a length of 15 meters or 50ft and a weight between 20-25 metric tons .
18. A certain body size is a strict requirement in marine mammals, primarily because of the increased heat loss under water .
19. The evolution of a new more efficient way of feeding – Filter Feeding is believed to be one of the reasons for the gigantism in whales .
20. The drastic changes in the oceans ecosystem during the last ice age probably caused the gigantism in baleen whales .
21. The recent gigantism in whales is most likely linked to the appearance of a sudden seasonal abundance of widely scattered patches of prey .
22. In only about five million generations, whales increased their body mass 5,000 times .
23. In only 50 million years, the terrestrial ancestors of whales that were barely larger than a housecat evolved to be the largest animals the world has ever seen .