Everything about the blue whale is enormous

Everything about the blue whale is enormous. 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.

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 calledkrill. During its high feeding season, a blue whale consumes more than 4-6 tons of krill in one day. In order to get that much to eat, a blue whale can expand its throat to take in as much as 50 tons of water in one gulp. Then it forces the water out through comb-like plates which keep the krill in and let the water filter out. These huge plates are called baleen. Baleen is made of the same material as our fingernails.

Blue whales may also make sounds to communicate with other whales and to find a mate. Imagine what it would be like to be the biggest animal in the world swimming alone through the cold ocean waters.