WEBVTT - How Do Blue Whales Work? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.880 Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:10.079 Stuff Lauren vogelban here. Dating back to the days of 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:13.360 Wooly Mammoth's, humans have been obsessed with larger than life mammals, 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.200 and on the aquatic front, there's no bigger mammal than 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:18.439 the blue whale, which is the largest known animal to 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:21.759 ever grace the planet. No evidence has been found that 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.680 any other creature, even the largest of dinosaurs, surpassed the 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.720 blue whale in size. But wait, what about the megalodon, 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.479 the extinct shark species believed to be the largest fish 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:32.239 on the planet, and which you may recall from the 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.839 twenty eighteen horror movie The meg Well. Scientists guests that 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.800 even the biggest megalodon only reached a mere fifty eight 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:41.120 feet in length, though some argue it was up to 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:45.239 eighty two feet that's eighteen up to twenty five. By contrast, 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:47.360 the largest blue whales clock in at a little more 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:49.879 than a hundred feet or thirty meters long, and on 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:52.680 average are between seventy and ninety feet in length that's 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.880 twenty three to twenty seven meters, and their average weight 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:59.040 is approximately four hundred thousand pounds. That's a hundred and 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.480 eighty one thousand kilo mds or about two hundred tons. Females, 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:05.120 by the way, tend to be larger than males. The 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:08.199 largest blue whales live in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.360 A blue whale's tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant. 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:13.959 About a hundred people could fit in a blue whale's mouth. 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:16.280 A blue whale's heart is the size of a car, 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:18.800 its eyes the size of a basketball, and a small 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:21.880 child could swim through its arteries. The spray from a 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:24.200 blue whales blowhole is almost as tall as a three 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:28.240 story building that's about thirty ft or nine meters high. 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.280 These aptly named whales are blue gray in color, with 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:34.600 lighter gray patches that resemble splotches of paint, though they 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:38.000 also go by sulfur bottom whale due to their yellowish underbelly. 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:40.880 The blue whale is part of the Baileean whale family, 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:43.919 a group of toothless whales. It has instead of teeth, 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:46.480 plates of thick, coarse bristles in its mouth that it 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:49.680 uses to catch food. These are called black baileeen or 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:52.080 whale bone, and a single whale might have up to 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:54.160 eight hundred plates of the stuff in its great mouth. 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:58.760 Despite their massive size, blue whales rely on very tiny 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:01.800 two inch crustaceans own as krill as their staple meal. 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:04.880 But boy, do blue whales eat a lot of krill. 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:08.600 We spoke with Adam Ratner, a marine scientist with the 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.200 Marine Mammal Center. He said, given their size, blue whales 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:15.440 rely on vast quantities of food. Using plates of baleen 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.360 to filter small zooplankton from the water, they can consume 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:21.040 up to six tons or twenty thousand pounds that's over 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.600 five thousand kilograms of krill every day. In one gulp, 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:27.080 the blue whale can take in a hundred of its 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.280 body weight of water and krill. That's half a million calories. 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:34.600 Despite all the hubbub over their hefty size, not much 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.360 is known about blue whales behaviors and social structures. Ratner said, 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:40.840 we do tend to see blue whales traveling alone or 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:43.480 in small groups. In terms of behavior in the wild, 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:45.760 they don't tend to be very belligerent to each other 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:49.000 or other animals, but rather focused on feeding or migrating. 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:52.200 But again, behavior during breeding season could be very different, 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:55.959 and it's still in need of more research, but marine 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:58.760 biologists are studying one way that blue whales communicate with 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.519 each other. Sound. Ratner said, blue wheels produce one of 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.040 the loudest sounds in the animal kingdom, a low rumble 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:07.520 that can be heard hundreds of miles and even reported 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.400 to be thousands of miles away in the ocean. Researchers 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:13.760 are still unsure of the meaning of the vocalizations, though, 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.000 with best guesses being around finding mates or signaling opportunities 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:21.920 for mating or feeding. Along with studying whale behavior, scientists 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:26.000 use whale vocalizations to estimate whale population sizes. When these 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:28.679 whale calls are repeated in a sequence, they become known 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:32.360 as songs. They often repeat sequences vocalized by other blue 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:34.600 whales and add risks of their own, sort of like 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.280 whale memes or pop music. We also spoke with John 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.640 Callum Bocuus, a co founder of the nonprofit Cascadier Research 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:44.520 and a research biologist, to his conducted extensive studies on 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:48.560 the movement of blue whales. He explained, we've recently discovered 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:51.760 these very loud calls are produced only by males, indicating 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:54.120 it plays some role in mating or in competition with 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.440 other males. He notes that blue whales will also form 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.720 male female pairs during mating season, with the female leading 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:04.600 the pair. Competition for mats can also get a little intense, apparently. 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:08.920 Calumbodicus said there's also a competition involving high speed swimming 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:11.880 that occurs when more than one male is involved. Blue 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:14.280 whales can adjust the frequency of their songs by changing 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.040 the speed at which they blow air through their vocal cords. 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:19.560 Some researchers think that can do this intentionally, as they've 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.239 observed a gradual reduction in the frequency of blue whale 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:25.479 calls over the years, perhaps in reaction to noisy conditions 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:29.640 caused by objects like passing ships. A female blue whale 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:31.839 might give birth to a single baby calf every two 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.839 to three years. Each pregnancy lasts around eleven months. These 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.719 blue whale babies typically are whopping twenty five ft long 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:41.640 around eight meters and weighs seven thousand pounds or over 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:44.600 three thousand kilograms, which is heavier than a midsized suv. 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.520 Ratner said the milk from their mothers is so nutritious 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:51.920 that the calves gained two hundred pounds. That's a day 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:57.279 nursing a Blue whales average lifespan is eighty to ninety years. However, 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:01.159 their existence is increasingly under threat. Whales are currently listed 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.800 as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. As commercial whale 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:07.400 hunting took off in the early nineteen hundreds, blue whales 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:09.560 dropped from a pre willing population of two d and 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:13.920 fifty thousand to an estimated ten to twenty individuals alive presently. 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:17.640 Most of the decrease has been observed in the southern hemisphere, 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.559 where blue whales were previously the most numerous. We also 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.120 spoke with Jeff Jacobson, a marine biologist with a no 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:27.719 Year Center for Marine Science. He said, for some reason, 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:30.000 blue whales were not as impacted by whaling along the 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.120 California coast, and we have at least two thousand individuals here. 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:37.280 The population is still recovering. Around Antarctica, he said that 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:40.520 whales still remain highly vulnerable de collisions with ships, perhaps 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:44.560 because more krill sometimes appear in shipping lanes. Other challenges 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:47.080 facing the blue whale include entrapment and fishing gear, and 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:50.440 climate change affecting the mammal's food sources, but there are 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.480 some organizations working to make habitats safer for blue whales. 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:56.600 Ratner says that the Marine Mammal Center has addressed policies 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:59.320 about changing shipping lanes in San Francisco Bay in order 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:02.039 to reduce the light flihood of boats impacting migrating whales. 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.320 He also said that quote individuals around the world can 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:08.080 make a huge difference by examining their carbon footprint and 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:11.159 working within their communities, neighborhoods, schools, and work to reduce 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.760 their use of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:16.720 gas for energy and transportation, as well as producing their 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:19.000 use of single use plastics, one of the most commonly 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:21.160 found items of ocean trash. The compose a threat of 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:25.760 entanglement or ingestion for large whales. Like many marine mammals, 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:28.440 blue whales migrate as the seasons change, but you can 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:30.760 find them all over the globe in every ocean except 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.880 the Arctic, and both on coastal shelves and deeper waters. 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.320 Ratner explained that the whales typically migrate towards the North 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:40.240 and South poles, heading into cooler waters in the summer 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:42.520 to feast, than back toward the equator in the winter 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.039 to breed. The Calumbocutus adds that the blue whales migration 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:48.720 patterns are slightly more flexible than other baley whales, like 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:51.440 the gray whale. This is mainly because blue whales are 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:54.080 always in search of food to satisfy their large appetites, 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:56.640 so their movements are geared more toward finding food sources 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:00.640 than adhering to strict migratory patterns. Although there are a 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.520 number of distinct blue whale populations, they can broadly be 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:06.000 grouped to those that reside in the Northern hemisphere and 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:08.640 those that are found in the southern hemisphere. One of 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:11.480 the larger populations in the northern hemisphere is the estimated 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:13.600 two thousand some blue whales that feed off the coast 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:17.880 of California and migrate to Costa Rica and Mexico. It's 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:20.520 somewhat difficult to track them because satellite tagging that you 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:23.040 might use on other marine mammals like sea lions, could 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:26.360 cause skin infection in the whales. Scientists studying whales will 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:29.440 often use a more basic photo identification system to keep 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:32.120 track of specific blue whales around the world, because they 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:34.120 each have unique markings on their skin that can be 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.440 used to keep track of them and for some good news. 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.640 According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:43.720 List of Threatened species, blue whale numbers have likely gone 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:46.320 up in recent decades, so things seem to be looking 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:53.960 up for the blue giant. Today's episode was written by 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.000 Terry yar Lagata and produced by Tyler Clain. Brain Stuff 0:07:57.040 --> 0:07:59.280 is a production of iHeart Radio's House Stuff Works. For 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:01.360 more in this a months of other big topics, visit 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:03.720 our home planet, how stuff Works dot com and for 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:06.000 more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the I heart 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:08.640 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:09.320 favorite shows.