Blue whales or scientific language Balaenoptera musculus is a very large sea creature, and is believed to be the largest living creature that ever lived on planet Earth, bigger than the largest dinosaur. The largest blue whale ever recorded weighed 181 tons and a length of 33 meters. If placed on the ground, Blue Whale is the same length as 9 family cars!

The size of a blue whale's heart is about the size of a car, and its blood vessels are so big that we can swim in them.

The real giant

Imagine if we were sailing in the ocean for the first time, exploring places we had never seen before, and suddenly beside the ship we saw blue whales rising to the surface of the sea, and their size was longer than the ship we were riding.

Perhaps we will be afraid, especially since we have never seen a living thing of such great size, nor do we know what the great creature can do, whether he can turn the ship and eat humans. In fact, we need not fear this giant sea creature.

For thousands of years, sailors have rarely seen these giant mammals and if they meet a blue whale, they shy away immediately because they are afraid of their appearance. Of course it can be understood for a layman like us to be afraid and was was to meet this gigantic creature.

Now, we know that blue whales are not at all harmful to humans, and in fact, they have something in common with us, humans, that they are warm-blooded mammals that must breathe in the air.

They are also social beings with complex language and intelligence. And most importantly, blue whales are not monster at all, they are gentle giants that we must respect, admire, and protect.

The gentle giant

In Hollywood movies, it is often depicted that giant sea animals are evil monsters that hurt people and bring destruction. In the wild, the greatest creatures on the planet are apparently gentle, harmless creatures.

And the opposite is true, blue whales, as well as other whale species, suffer terribly from human activities, and many are heading for the brink of extinction. Blue whales are one of the many hunted for centuries.

It is only in these last years that we begin to appreciate the value of their existence. The US government has placed blue whales as an endangered species. Reported by Extreme Science, whalers in the 19th and 20th centuries hunted him to near extinction. At its peak, as many as 29,000 blue whales were slaughtered in 1931 alone.

The staple food of blue whales is krill, although they also eat small copepods. This zooplankton species is eaten by various blue whales from one ocean to another. In the North Atlantic, Meganyctiphanes norvegica, Thysanoessa raschii, Thysanoessa inermis and Thysanoessa longicaudata are common foods. In the South Pacific, Euphausia pacifica, Thysanoessa inermis, Thysanoessa longipes, Thysanoessa spinifera, Nyctiphanes simplex and Nematoscelis megalops; in the Antarctic Euphausia superba, Euphausia crystallorophias and Euphausia vallentini.

Adult blue whales can eat as much as 40 million krill per day. They always eat in areas with high krill concentrations, so that sometimes it takes approximately 3,600 kilograms (7,900 lb) of krill in one day. Blue whales fill their belly in waters rich in krill in Antarctica before migrating to breeding ground in warmer waters and less rich in krill near the equator.

Perhaps one of the most spectacular of the Blue Whales is the sounds they make. Researchers have measured the low-frequency sounds produced by blue whales to communicate with each other using a decible meter.

Some of their vocalizations have been recorded as hard as 188 decibels and can be heard as far as 848 km! By comparison, the jet sound of an aircraft taking off is 120 decibels. Thus, it can be concluded that the blue whale is a living thing that is able to produce the harshest sound in the world.

Why is the Blue Whale so large?

So far, researchers are still not sure why, but they firmly believe that as big as any dinosaurs in the past, they never reached the size of a blue whale. This is the greatest creature that ever lived on planet earth, and still lives up to now.

One important reason why whales can reach large sizes is they have a large living space, a large area to move and explore. More than 70% of the planet Earth consists of oceans.