Blue Whale

Hi everyone.

It is the largest animal on earth, ever. A big blue whale can be 100 feet long and weigh up to 150 tons. That's as large as a Boeing jet. Its heart is as large as a small car. Fifty people could stand on its tongue. Its spout shoots up at least 30 feet when it surfaces for air.
How whales breathe?
A whale's "nostrils" are called blowholes and are on the top of its head. Some whales have one blowhole and others, like this blue whale, have two. Unlike humans, whales breathe voluntarily. That means they choose when to take a breath. This is important because whales can't breathe underwater. They surface every few minutes to blow out a mixture of water and air and take in a breath of fresh air.
Like all whales, the blue whale is a mammal rather than a fish. It is warm-blooded, has lungs rather than gills, and nourishes its young with milk. A blue whale's milk supposedly tastes like a mixture of fish, liver, milk of magnesia, and castor oil. Bleech! But it's very rich and nourishing for baby blues. A baby blue whale drinks over 50 gallons of its mother's milk in a day. In its first several weeks of life, it gains 10 pounds an hour or a little over 200 pounds a day!
When a baby blue whale is about 6 months old, it starts to eat small shrimp-like animals called krill. During its high feeding season, a blue whale consumes more than 4-6 tons of krill in one day.
But, how many krills can a whale eat?
It's hard to imagine, but the world's biggest animal eats animals that are less than 1/1000th its size. In order to get enough to eat, a full-grown blue whale might eat 40 million krill in one day!
All whales have amazing adaptations that help them survive in the ocean. Whales don't sleep like you and me. If they did, they would drown. Instead, whales take very short naps, often floating near the surface of the ocean. Whales rely on their thick layers of blubber to keep them warm in cold waters.