Blue Whales

Feeding

        Since blue whales are such large animals they have to eat lots of food to get the proper nutrition. Especially when they spend around five to six months without food in their breeding grounds. Ironically the largest animal ever feeds on one of the smallest. Krill. 

        Krill are tiny, shrimp-like creatures. One can sit on your thumb and still have enough room for two or three more. But they live in swarms. Some live in groups so big that it can feed several blue whales, which require around 40 million a day during feeding season!  Of course, they don't eat 40 million a day because they must find the food first, and not all groups have 40 million in them. 

        Blue whales are gulpers, to catch and eat their food they use these lines on their throats called throat grooves. When they open their mouths it opens so wide that they could fit lots of tiny krill in it!  Of course this also fills their mouth with salt water, which in undrinkable. They get water from krill, which surprisingly has enough freshwater in it to supply a huge whale.

        The way to catch their food is diving down into the group mouth open. Once they fill it with krill they clamp it shut. Since they were diving down, little to no krill escaped their mouth because of the current. When they close their mouth they swim up, using their tongues they push the water out through their baleen until nothing is left except for the krill, which they swallow.

        An interesting fact about baleen whales is that their throats, unlike toothed whales, are small, only big enough to allow their food to go down. So swallowing any big fish, or boat or anything bigger than your thumb is impossible. Whereas toothed whales throats are larger, allowing prey like giant squid to go down.

        It is hard to tell is baleen whales are "smart" they are simply too big to fit into captivity. Which is maybe a good thing, every blue whale roams the ocean freely and are not restrained to a tank. Plus, dolphins which are a part of the toothed whale family and are technically a type of whale. Have been proven to be very smart, using tools to aid them. 

        Maybe intelligence isn't always graded on solving puzzles and using tools. In some views humans are very unintelligent. Such as the ability to adapt to the world around us and not change it to make it how we like it. In that view whales, birds, fish, cattle, and other animals are very smart. Everything is smart in it's own way which brings us back to feeding. The way animals such as whales catch their food is a miracle something which requires intelligence.

        Every animal had amazing ways to survive. Instead of pushing it away like it's no big deal we should cherish this, it is a beautiful thing.