Things you might have already known about blue whales:
- They are large.
- They are the largest animals ever. EVER. Larger than dinosaurs. Larger than other large whales.
- They eat krill (you probably know this from Finding Nemo).
Things you probably didn't know about blue whales but you really should:
- Their hearts weigh as much as the average car.
- Their tongues weigh as much as an African elephant.
- You could fit a toddler in a blue whale's blowhole (because I know how much you want to).
- Speaking of its blowhole, the spray of water created from the pressure of the air shooting out of a blue whale's blowhole can be up to 30 feet tall. Just the spray!
- You could crawl through a blue whale's major arteries. You could do it.
- A blue whale's tail is as wide as a school bus is long.
- Blue whales are born already ranking in the world's biggest animals and weigh 3 to 4 tons at birth. Then they gain an average of 200 pounds every day for their first year of life. Holy shit.
- They're also the loudest creatures - one blue whale can hear another from over 1,000 miles away.
AND YET...
Their esophagus is only four inches in diameter. Four inches. How do they eat enough to sustain their large selves, you ask? Remember Finding Nemo! (Swim away, swim away!) A blue whale eats an average of eight tons of krill every single day. Bless their tiny hearts and rapid reproduction.
You're amazed, right? Good. Go share with your friends. And your children and your husband and your acquaintances and the guy checking his Blackberry on the elevator tomorrow morning. Because these are facts that should be known. Blue whales are rad.
This has been a public service announcement.
