Whale Fun Facts
1. Dolphins are actually small whales! In fact, a whale is any marine animal with a horizontal tail.
2. A five year old could crawl through a blue whale’s largest artery.
3. A child could crawl through a blue whale’s aorta (largest blood vessel leaving the heart).
4. Some large species of whales may live for 150 years or more.
5. Blue whales have hearts the size of the Volkswagen Beetle car!
6. The largest animal on earth eats one of the smallest, krill: A blue whale is about 100 million times heavier than a single krill.
7. When feeding, blue whales can eat 1.5 tons of food per day—the equivalent of the meat in 8,000 Quarter Pounders (hamburgers). The following day they may consume 8,000 more.
8. A sperm whale has the largest brain of any animal known to have lived on earth. It can weigh up to 20 pounds.
9. Blue whales are more than twice as massive as Seismosaurus, the biggest of the dinosaurs.
10 The largest recorded blue whale was 106 ft long and weighed about 160 tons.
11. The heart of a blue whale may weigh 4 thousand pounds (2 tons) and pump about 60 gallons with each beat. The heart valves are roughly the size of hubcaps.
12. Whales can slow down their hearts to less than 10 beats per minute to help conserve oxygen during their long, deep dives.
13. Sperm whales can dive as deep as two miles and stay submerged for an hour and a half or longer.
14. A mother blue whale can produce up to 100 gallons of rich milk each day—the equivalent of 400 quarts—or 2-fifty gallon drums of heavy cream!
15. A baby blue whale can drink 2.5 gallons of milk up to 35 times a day, and can gain 250 pounds each day (10 pounds each hour)!
16. Humpback whales feed by gulping swimming pool sized amounts of water into their mouths and then strain out the fish and krill by pushing out the water through their baleen with their tongues.
17. Male humpback whales are known for the long songs they sing during mating season. One possible explanation is that the males sing to impress females and that those males who can sing the longest and hold their breath the longest, are probably the most successful in winning the female over.
18. At birth Humpback whale calves can weigh 1-2 tons and be 12-15 feet long!
19. Humpback whales grow to about 50 feet long and weigh over 45 tons. They are acrobatic, playful whales with the longest flippers (pectoral fins) of any whale, and they often come close to whale watch boats.
20. Right whales can be identified by the distinctive white markings (called ‘callosities’) on their heads.
21. A 12,000 pound orca or killer whale can leap to touch a target 15 to 20 feet above the water.
22. Sperm whales have teeth that show on their bottom jaws only. These teeth fit into sockets in the upper jaw (which also has tiny teeth that are hidden from view.
23. Fish swim by moving their tails from side to side while whales swim by moving their tails up and down. The upward motion is the more powerful stroke.
24. Toothed whales, like dolphins, do not chew their food. Their teeth are used only to grasp the slippery fish they catch.
25. Toothed whales are generally smaller and more maneuverable than baleen whales because they need to chase and catch individual prey rather than engulfing schools of it.
26. Sound travels between four and five times faster in water than in air, approximately a mile per second. A whale can send a sound out and detect a school of fish a mile away in two seconds. (It takes one second for the sound to get there and one for it to bounce all the way back).
27. Whale echolocation is so precise, not only can whales detect the shape and size of an object, but also its composition. It is likely that from the echoes of its sounds off a human diver, a dolphin can determine both the outside shape of the diver as well as the skeleton inside it.