- The blue whale's lower jaw can weigh so much that it is difficult for the whale to close its mouth. Measurements of a 150-ton blue whale 29 m long showed its mouth could hold 32.6 m³ of water.
- Fat accumulated by the blue whale during intense feeding allows it to go almost without food for several months. Its large body mass helps it consume a lot of food when it is available in high concentration.
- The throat ridges of the blue whale allow the mouth to stretch very strongly, and the movable joint of the lower jaw enhances this property. The throat ridges and the lower jaw bone joint ensure a sharp increase in mouth volume.
- The blue whale has well-developed hearing and touch. The blue whale’s tongue weighs up to 4 t.
- Female blue whales migrate north in winter to protect calves from cold, despite food availability in Antarctica. Newborns have underdeveloped blubber, making them especially vulnerable.
- Blue whale meat, like that of other baleen whales, is edible, unlike the meat of toothed whales, such as sperm whales, which has a strong unpleasant odor. Meat of young blue whales is soft and tender, pinkish-red in color.
- Each side of the upper jaw of a blue whale has between 260 and 400 plates, totaling 540–790 plates, sometimes over 800. It has the most plates of any whale, with a record of 800.
- The blue whale consumes up to 8 tons of krill daily, which includes up to 40 million individual crustaceans. It requires about 3–4 % of its body weight in food per day.
- The fringes on the blue whale’s baleen plates are quite rough and rigid, adapted for feeding on large crustaceans. Smooth whales, which feed on small planktonic crustaceans, have fine and elastic fringes.
- The blue whale's stomach can hold up to 1.5 tons of food. A tightly filled blue whale stomach can hold up to 1 ton of food and even up to 1.5 tons.
- The blue whale is a typical planktivore, and its diet mainly consists of small crustaceans from the order Euphausiacea, not exceeding 6 cm in length. These crustaceans form large aggregations known as krill.
食性蓝鲸
在这里我们介绍蓝鲸在不同年龄和不同季节的饮食。
蓝鲸：它是怎样的