Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren vogelban here. Dating back to the days of
Speaker 1: Wooly Mammoth's, humans have been obsessed with larger than life mammals,
Speaker 1: and on the aquatic front, there's no bigger mammal than
Speaker 1: the blue whale, which is the largest known animal to
Speaker 1: ever grace the planet. No evidence has been found that
Speaker 1: any other creature, even the largest of dinosaurs, surpassed the
Speaker 1: blue whale in size. But wait, what about the megalodon,
Speaker 1: the extinct shark species believed to be the largest fish
Speaker 1: on the planet, and which you may recall from the
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen horror movie The meg Well. Scientists guests that
Speaker 1: even the biggest megalodon only reached a mere fifty eight
Speaker 1: feet in length, though some argue it was up to
Speaker 1: eighty two feet that's eighteen up to twenty five. By contrast,
Speaker 1: the largest blue whales clock in at a little more
Speaker 1: than a hundred feet or thirty meters long, and on
Speaker 1: average are between seventy and ninety feet in length that's
Speaker 1: twenty three to twenty seven meters, and their average weight
Speaker 1: is approximately four hundred thousand pounds. That's a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty one thousand kilo mds or about two hundred tons. Females,
Speaker 1: by the way, tend to be larger than males. The
Speaker 1: largest blue whales live in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.
Speaker 1: A blue whale's tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant.
Speaker 1: About a hundred people could fit in a blue whale's mouth.
Speaker 1: A blue whale's heart is the size of a car,
Speaker 1: its eyes the size of a basketball, and a small
Speaker 1: child could swim through its arteries. The spray from a
Speaker 1: blue whales blowhole is almost as tall as a three
Speaker 1: story building that's about thirty ft or nine meters high.
Speaker 1: These aptly named whales are blue gray in color, with
Speaker 1: lighter gray patches that resemble splotches of paint, though they
Speaker 1: also go by sulfur bottom whale due to their yellowish underbelly.
Speaker 1: The blue whale is part of the Baileean whale family,
Speaker 1: a group of toothless whales. It has instead of teeth,
Speaker 1: plates of thick, coarse bristles in its mouth that it
Speaker 1: uses to catch food. These are called black baileeen or
Speaker 1: whale bone, and a single whale might have up to
Speaker 1: eight hundred plates of the stuff in its great mouth.
Speaker 1: Despite their massive size, blue whales rely on very tiny
Speaker 1: two inch crustaceans own as krill as their staple meal.
Speaker 1: But boy, do blue whales eat a lot of krill.
Speaker 1: We spoke with Adam Ratner, a marine scientist with the
Speaker 1: Marine Mammal Center. He said, given their size, blue whales
Speaker 1: rely on vast quantities of food. Using plates of baleen
Speaker 1: to filter small zooplankton from the water, they can consume
Speaker 1: up to six tons or twenty thousand pounds that's over
Speaker 1: five thousand kilograms of krill every day. In one gulp,
Speaker 1: the blue whale can take in a hundred of its
Speaker 1: body weight of water and krill. That's half a million calories.
Speaker 1: Despite all the hubbub over their hefty size, not much
Speaker 1: is known about blue whales behaviors and social structures. Ratner said,
Speaker 1: we do tend to see blue whales traveling alone or
Speaker 1: in small groups. In terms of behavior in the wild,
Speaker 1: they don't tend to be very belligerent to each other
Speaker 1: or other animals, but rather focused on feeding or migrating.
Speaker 1: But again, behavior during breeding season could be very different,
Speaker 1: and it's still in need of more research, but marine
Speaker 1: biologists are studying one way that blue whales communicate with
Speaker 1: each other. Sound. Ratner said, blue wheels produce one of
Speaker 1: the loudest sounds in the animal kingdom, a low rumble
Speaker 1: that can be heard hundreds of miles and even reported
Speaker 1: to be thousands of miles away in the ocean. Researchers
Speaker 1: are still unsure of the meaning of the vocalizations, though,
Speaker 1: with best guesses being around finding mates or signaling opportunities
Speaker 1: for mating or feeding. Along with studying whale behavior, scientists
Speaker 1: use whale vocalizations to estimate whale population sizes. When these
Speaker 1: whale calls are repeated in a sequence, they become known
Speaker 1: as songs. They often repeat sequences vocalized by other blue
Speaker 1: whales and add risks of their own, sort of like
Speaker 1: whale memes or pop music. We also spoke with John
Speaker 1: Callum Bocuus, a co founder of the nonprofit Cascadier Research
Speaker 1: and a research biologist, to his conducted extensive studies on
Speaker 1: the movement of blue whales. He explained, we've recently discovered
Speaker 1: these very loud calls are produced only by males, indicating
Speaker 1: it plays some role in mating or in competition with
Speaker 1: other males. He notes that blue whales will also form
Speaker 1: male female pairs during mating season, with the female leading
Speaker 1: the pair. Competition for mats can also get a little intense, apparently.
Speaker 1: Calumbodicus said there's also a competition involving high speed swimming
Speaker 1: that occurs when more than one male is involved. Blue
Speaker 1: whales can adjust the frequency of their songs by changing
Speaker 1: the speed at which they blow air through their vocal cords.
Speaker 1: Some researchers think that can do this intentionally, as they've
Speaker 1: observed a gradual reduction in the frequency of blue whale
Speaker 1: calls over the years, perhaps in reaction to noisy conditions
Speaker 1: caused by objects like passing ships. A female blue whale
Speaker 1: might give birth to a single baby calf every two
Speaker 1: to three years. Each pregnancy lasts around eleven months. These
Speaker 1: blue whale babies typically are whopping twenty five ft long
Speaker 1: around eight meters and weighs seven thousand pounds or over
Speaker 1: three thousand kilograms, which is heavier than a midsized suv.
Speaker 1: Ratner said the milk from their mothers is so nutritious
Speaker 1: that the calves gained two hundred pounds. That's a day
Speaker 1: nursing a Blue whales average lifespan is eighty to ninety years. However,
Speaker 1: their existence is increasingly under threat. Whales are currently listed
Speaker 1: as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. As commercial whale
Speaker 1: hunting took off in the early nineteen hundreds, blue whales
Speaker 1: dropped from a pre willing population of two d and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand to an estimated ten to twenty individuals alive presently.
Speaker 1: Most of the decrease has been observed in the southern hemisphere,
Speaker 1: where blue whales were previously the most numerous. We also
Speaker 1: spoke with Jeff Jacobson, a marine biologist with a no
Speaker 1: Year Center for Marine Science. He said, for some reason,
Speaker 1: blue whales were not as impacted by whaling along the
Speaker 1: California coast, and we have at least two thousand individuals here.
Speaker 1: The population is still recovering. Around Antarctica, he said that
Speaker 1: whales still remain highly vulnerable de collisions with ships, perhaps
Speaker 1: because more krill sometimes appear in shipping lanes. Other challenges
Speaker 1: facing the blue whale include entrapment and fishing gear, and
Speaker 1: climate change affecting the mammal's food sources, but there are
Speaker 1: some organizations working to make habitats safer for blue whales.
Speaker 1: Ratner says that the Marine Mammal Center has addressed policies
Speaker 1: about changing shipping lanes in San Francisco Bay in order
Speaker 1: to reduce the light flihood of boats impacting migrating whales.
Speaker 1: He also said that quote individuals around the world can
Speaker 1: make a huge difference by examining their carbon footprint and
Speaker 1: working within their communities, neighborhoods, schools, and work to reduce
Speaker 1: their use of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural
Speaker 1: gas for energy and transportation, as well as producing their
Speaker 1: use of single use plastics, one of the most commonly
Speaker 1: found items of ocean trash. The compose a threat of
Speaker 1: entanglement or ingestion for large whales. Like many marine mammals,
Speaker 1: blue whales migrate as the seasons change, but you can
Speaker 1: find them all over the globe in every ocean except
Speaker 1: the Arctic, and both on coastal shelves and deeper waters.
Speaker 1: Ratner explained that the whales typically migrate towards the North
Speaker 1: and South poles, heading into cooler waters in the summer
Speaker 1: to feast, than back toward the equator in the winter
Speaker 1: to breed. The Calumbocutus adds that the blue whales migration
Speaker 1: patterns are slightly more flexible than other baley whales, like
Speaker 1: the gray whale. This is mainly because blue whales are
Speaker 1: always in search of food to satisfy their large appetites,
Speaker 1: so their movements are geared more toward finding food sources
Speaker 1: than adhering to strict migratory patterns. Although there are a
Speaker 1: number of distinct blue whale populations, they can broadly be
Speaker 1: grouped to those that reside in the Northern hemisphere and
Speaker 1: those that are found in the southern hemisphere. One of
Speaker 1: the larger populations in the northern hemisphere is the estimated
Speaker 1: two thousand some blue whales that feed off the coast
Speaker 1: of California and migrate to Costa Rica and Mexico. It's
Speaker 1: somewhat difficult to track them because satellite tagging that you
Speaker 1: might use on other marine mammals like sea lions, could
Speaker 1: cause skin infection in the whales. Scientists studying whales will
Speaker 1: often use a more basic photo identification system to keep
Speaker 1: track of specific blue whales around the world, because they
Speaker 1: each have unique markings on their skin that can be
Speaker 1: used to keep track of them and for some good news.
Speaker 1: According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red
Speaker 1: List of Threatened species, blue whale numbers have likely gone
Speaker 1: up in recent decades, so things seem to be looking
Speaker 1: up for the blue giant. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Terry yar Lagata and produced by Tyler Clain. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio's House Stuff Works. For
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