Blue whale

Blue whales are a species of whale known by the scientific name Balaenoptera musculus. Blue whales are best known as the largest of the whales, and are in fact the largest mammal on Earth. They are the largest mammal on Earth. Blue whales are over 100 feet long and weigh are over 200 tons. Also their tongues can weigh as much as an elephant and their hearts weighs as much as a car. Like their enormous body, blue whale penis is also the largest penis in the world. The Size of their penis is 8 to 10 feet, and their weight is almost between 390 to 990 pounds. They have a teeth called baleen. Their teeth are unlike other animals, and really soft like a brush. They have the most powerful voice in the animal kingdom, which can travel in deep water over hundreds, or even thousands, of miles and send information to their group. They also eat an incredible amount of food daily - eating as many as 40 million krill a day (about 4 tons). Their appetite is unbelievably enormous. Many Blue whales were hunted in the 20th century. Because of too many blue whales decreased, the institution called International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned all hunting of blue whales and gave them worldwide protection. Blue whales are one of the animals which are protected by the law.

Body Design
Blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) are the largest animals on Earth. They are over 100 feet long and weigh over 200 tons. The weight of their tongues can weigh as much as an elephant and their hearts can weigh as much as a car. Their babies are also very huge, they weigh over 3 tons and stretch to 25 feet. So this proves that they are the largest animals in the world. Balaenoptera musculus is baleen whale, baleen means it is the fringed plates of fingernail like material. and it is attached to their upper jaws Balaenoptera musculus surface is Blue gray color and underside is lighter color or white. And their dorsal fin is small beside their body, it's only 1 foot long, and the shape is triangular or falcate, and is located three to fourths of the way back on the body.

The Blue whale is a mammal, so they have a penis on their body. The Blue whale penis is the largest size of all living animal in the world. The average size of their penis is 8 to 10 feet and larger whales are growing between 15 – 18 inches in diameter. Their weight are almost between 390 to 990 pounds. The Blue whale penis size is 8 percent to 15 percent of their body. Also blue whale penis is three times the size of the typical sei whales (It is baleen whale and the third-largest whale after the blue whale and the fin whale ) penis, so only gray whale and humpback whale have almost equal size of penis with blue whale.

Life Cycle
The way to figure the blue whale age is counting the number of ovarian scars in sexually mature females, changes in the coloration of eye lenses, and counting the number of ridges on baleen plates. Balaenoptera musculus can live 80 to 90 years, and longest is estimated as 110 years. Balaenoptera musculus normal swimming speed is around 22 km/hr, but they can make 48 km/hr if alarmed. They can dive as deep as 500m and can stay for 10 - 20 minutes. They mostly travel alone or in groups of 2-3. Larger groups are over 60 whales. Blue whales have the most powerful voice in the animal kingdom, so their voice can travel in deep water over hundreds, or even thousands, of miles. This powerful voice can tell lot's of information to their group efficiently.

The gestation period is eleven or twelve months long and baby whales are born in warm, low latitude area water in the winter months after the adults return from their high latitude feeding grounds. The average number of offspring is one time in their life and range of weaning age is 7 to 8 months. When the baby whales are independent, the range time is 2-3 years, and average age at sexual or reproductive maturity is 5 years for both male and female. Mother whales consume 100 gallons of milk a day to feed baby whales. So baby whales are growing 1 or 1/2 inches in a day.

Ecology
Balaenoptera musculus staple is usually small shrimp like krill. During the summer feeding season, the adult whale usually eats 4 tons of krill or more than 4 tons each day. That means, they eat 40 million krill a day. When they find krill, they dive for 10-20 minutes at a time and they dive less than 100 m. When they are eating, first they open the huge mouth and inside the mouth there is lots of water and krills. Then they push the water out through its baleen plates and swallow the krill that has stayed inside its mouth. This is the way they can eat krill. Actually, the Balaenoptera musculus (blue whale) don't have any natural predators because they are very big. But there are some predators to baby Balaenoptera musculus. For example, large shark can be a predator.

Including Balaenoptera musculus, blue whales are living in all the oceans of the world. They are usually seen along continental shelves and ice fronts, but they are also found in the deep ocean and in shallow inshore regions. The largest populations are in the Southern Hemisphere, the North Pacific, and the North Atlantic. In the North Pacific, Balaenoptera musculus can be seen at California up to the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. Balaenoptera musculus are moving a lot because they like to spend the winters in temperate and subtropical regions. So they move to the polar regions in the spring and summer. The whales in the North Atlantic move to the Arctic during the summer and spring seasons.

Conservation
There are about 10000-25000 blue whales nowadays. But there were much more blue whales in the past. The reason why the population decreased is because of whaling. In the 20th century, 350,000 of blue whales were killed by whaling. People are hunting blue whales because a single 90-foot blue whale could yield up to 120 barrels of oil. So they were killed by the thousands. The whaling industry began to focus on blue whales after 1900. So the slaughter peaked in 1931, 29,000 blue whales were killed in one season. Actually because of their enormous size and speed, blue whales were safe from early whalers, who could not pursue them in open boats with hand harpoons. But in 1868 a Norwegian, Sven Foyn, revolutionized the whaling industry with the invention of the exploding harpoon gun and by using steam and diesel powered factory ships and catcher boats. After he invented this kind of equipment, the blue whales hunting began.

Because of too much whaling, and the population of blue whales was decreasing, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned all hunting of blue whales in 1966 and gave them worldwide protection. After this law, the population of blue whales were increased. Blue whale have few predators like sharks. But most of blue whales were not dead by predators, 99% of blue whales were dead by whaling. Nowadays blue whales are currently classified as endangered on the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List.

Video
This is the Video of Blue whale swimming, and this video also show exactly how blue whale surface look like. 9pjI2XkmoL0