Blue Whale
· Blue Whale Habitat
· Blue Whale Food
· Blue Whale Behaviour
· Conservation Status
· Blue Whale Pictures
· Blue Whale Facts

Blue Whale Food

The Blue Whale depends on so called euphausiids for its survival. Euphausiids are also known as krill and are small, shrimp-like animals. The Blue Whale has adapted entirely to this source of Blue Whale food, and does for instance have no real teeth. It is a so called “baleen whale” and if you look into the mouth of a Blue Whale, you will see a series of 260-400 black fringed overlapping plates that hangs from each side of the animal’s upper jaw. Unlike teeth, baleen plates are made from keratin. Keratin is the same material that makes up hair and nails in a human being, and the plates actually frays out into fine hairs at the ends. One baleen plate can be over 150 cm (60 inches) long – 50 cm (20 inches) toward the front of the whale’s mouth and 100 cm (40 inches) towards the rear.

The Blue Whale feeds by taking in vast amounts of water into its mouth and expelling it through these baleen plates. The Blue Whale is not only helped by its large mouth; it also has expanding grooves in the throat that increases the possible water mass even farther. One gulp can contain up to 50 tons of water. The baleen plates will trap the euphausiids (krill), and the Blue whale will then promptly swallow its catch.

The Blue Whale can reach speeds of 50 km/h (30 mph) for shorter periods of time and its normal traveling speed is no less than 20 km/h (12 mph). Feeding will however decrease its speed considerably and feeding Blue Whales normally keep a very gentle pace of roughly 5 km/h (3 mph).

The summer season is very important when it comes to Blue Whale food, because the summer season is also the feeding season. The Blue Whale must ingest astonishingly large amounts of euphausiids to grow and survive the following winter, and it is not uncommon for a whale to ingest over 4-6 tons of Blue Whale food per day during the summer. Since euphausiids are so miniscule, this means that one whale may have to trap over 40 million animals a day!