Top 65 Amazing Facts About Whale | Amazing Facts 4U
- The blue whale is not only the largest animal on Earth, but is also the largest animal to have ever existed on Earth at any point.
- Like dolphins and porpoises, whales are believed to have descended from land animals that returned to the water roughly 50 million years ago after living millions of years on land.
- There are two suborders of whales to which all species of whales belong: toothed whales and baleen whales.
- Toothed whales include sperm, killer, and beluga whales preying on large fish in deep waters as their main source of food.
- Baleen whales include blue and humpback whales which are filter feeders feeding on small organisms such as krill and plankton by straining large amounts of seawater through baleen which is a comb-like structure in their mouth.
- As mammals, whales are warm-blooded and maintain a body temperature similar to that of a human.
- In colder environments maintaining body temperature is facilitated by a thick wall of fat called blubber insulating their bodies.
- The blue whale is about 100 feet long and weighs nearly 200 tons.
- The amazing fact is a blue whale is as many as 4 large dinosaurs, 23 elephants, 230 cows, or 1800 men.
- The blue whale can live between 80 and 90 years in the wild.
- Although the blue whale is a deepwater hunter, as a mammal, it must come to the surface to breathe.
- Only one-half of the whale’s brain sleeps at a time. This process allows their body to get adequate rest while still providing for the necessary function of breathing to continue.
- Whales and other cetaceans move through the water by plunging their tails up and down in a vertical motion distinguishing them from fish, which move their tails from side to side when swimming.
- “Fluking” is the term for a whale lifting its tail out of the water prior to making a deep dive. The action is unique for each whale species’ allowing observers to identify species from a distance.
- Whales jumping out of the water is called “breaching” which is most often performed by the humpback whale. Amazingly they sometimes leave the water completely during a leap.
- Breaching is done by swimming quickly forward and then turning its spout suddenly upward to send its forward momentum skyward. It is quite a feat considering its massive weight.
- A whale’s visible exhalation is typically called the blow or spout which may rise vertically above the water for up to 9 meters. It is believed that the visible mist in the air forming the spout is a combination of moisture condensed from the whale’s breath and mucous sprayed from the nasal passages.
- Sperm whales can dive as deep as two miles into the water, and their bodies have unique physiological adaptations to survive the intense cold and crushing pressure. They can limit circulation to the brain and other organs, slow the heart to 10 beats per minute and collapse the lungs and rib cage to withstand the pressure.
- When a blue whale dives into the water, its head is already deeper than most scuba divers dare to go before its tail leaves the surface of the water.
- Blue whales are endangered species. It is estimated that only about 10,000-25,000 blue whales now remain in oceans.
- The amazing fact is that at 188 decibels, the whistle of the blue whale is the loudest sound produced by any animal which can be heard from 500 km away.
- Amazingly a child can crawl through the arteries in a blue whale’s heart. Its heartbeat is also so loud that it can be heard two miles away.
- A blue whale’s tongue is about the size of an elephant.
- Blue whale’s heart is about the size of a compact car.
- It’s amazing that the grey whale migrates 12,500 miles from the Arctic to Mexico and back every year.
- Amazingly a single breath from a mature blue whale can inflate up to 2000 balloons.
- Around 100 people can fit in the mouth of the blue whale, and yet amazingly it eats one of the smallest animals on the planet, krill (shrimp-like invertebrates) a crustacean smaller than a child’s finger.
- The amazing fact is that during the feeding season in Antarctica, a full grown blue whale eats about 4 million krill per day, that’s about 4 tons every day for 6 months.
- The whale’s mouth has a fascinating row of plates fringed with bristles to help it filter the minute prey and hold it.
- With each mouthful, the whale can hold up to 5,000 kg of water and plankton.
- The amazing fact is a whale’s throat is only large enough to roughly let a volleyball pass through, whereas its mouth can store up to 90 metric tons of food and water.
- The blue whale can go up to 6 months without eating after the feeding season.
- The blue whales usually cruise the ocean at over 8 km/h but can reach speeds of over 30 km/h.
- Amazingly females breed only once every three years and gestation is about one year.
- Females usually have only one offspring.
- It’s amazing that a baby blue whale (calf) emerges at birth weighing up to 3 Tons and up to 8 meters long.
- The calf is suckled in the water, drinking more than 600 liters of milk each day and gaining about 90 kg every day in the first year, and grows 1.5 inches per day.
- Nursing whale’s milk is similar to toothpaste as it must be thick enough not to dissipate into the water.
- Whales do not drink seawater instead, they extract water from their food by metabolizing the fat.
- The amazing fact is that black whales are born white.
- The songs of humpback whales can change dramatically from year to year, yet amazingly each whale in an ocean always sings the same song as the others.
- The fact is the wax plug in the ear of the whale has a pattern of layers when cut lengthwise. Scientists can count it to estimate the age of the whale.
- Amazing thing is whales can’t swim backward, tarantulas can’t spin webs, crocodiles can’t chew and hummingbirds can’t walk.
- If a blue whale were able to live on land, it would not survive as it would be crushed by its own body weight.
- Baleen whales use sonar to communicate with one another, emitting low-frequency sounds that can travel enormous distances underwater. The bass notes uttered by baleen whales are the loudest natural noises made by any animal.
- Most toothed whales hunt their prey using echolocation measuring the distance by the timing of the echo travel. In the dark depths of the ocean, this is the only sense that helps.
- The amazing fact is there’s a whale that has been swimming alone since 1992. It’s known as the “52Hz Whale” because of its sound frequency. Since other whales communicate between 12 and 25 Hz, no other whale responds to its song.
- Because whales typically use hearing as their primary sense, they have very small eyes in proportion to their overall body size.
- The average blue whale amazingly produces over 400 gallons of sperm when it ejaculates.
- An adult hunchback whale may be the host to as many as half a tons of parasitic barnacles. To remove them whales slough off patches of skin continuously.
- The fact is a killer whale is not species of whale but a type of dolphin.
- Killer whales know that great white sharks need to move to breathe and intelligently will hold them upside down in order to kill them.
- The killer whale, or orca, is the swiftest of all the marine animals with a swimming speed of 35 miles per hour. Only tuna, marlin, sailfish, and swordfish are faster.
- All killer whales are marked by defining patches of white on their black skin which distinguishes them uniquely.
- Whale vomit is worth tens of thousands of dollars and is used in the production of perfume.
- Blue whale fart bubbles are large enough to enclose a horse.
- Only three mammals undergo menopause namely elephant, humpback whales, and human females.
- Whales have no natural predators other than humans, who have hunted them for thousands of years for their meat and other raw materials as early as 3000 B.C.
- While ancient fishermen used the meat of whales for food, in the modern era whales were primarily hunted for oil and whalebone, a term used for the baleen. Whalebone was used to make corsets, umbrella ribs, handles, and brushes, while the oil was used for cooking, candle wax, and, much later, making margarine.
- Sperm whales used to be the most highly prized species due to the spermaceti organ contained in a sperm whale’s large, bulbous forehead holding up to 500 gallons of oil.
- A bowhead whale caught in 2007 had a harpoon embedded in its neck from 1880, making it at least 130 years old.
- In 1986, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) declared a moratorium on commercial whaling. There are still few nations that practicing commercial whaling Japan being one of them.
- When a whale dies and its carcass falls into the Abyssal zone of the ocean floor, amazingly it can sustain a complex localized ecosystem of deep-sea organisms for decades called a “whale fall”.
- An amazing fact is as per the law if a dead whale is found on a British beach, the head belongs to the king and the tail to the queen.
- Amazingly Japan used $30 million of its Tsunami relief funds to support whaling.
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