Some scientists have speculated that the blue whale may once have
walked on land because of what appears to be a free floating hip
bone in his body. The skeleton of a blue whale looks part fish,
part human and part bird.
It gains two hundred pounds a day and drinks a thousand pounds of milk
a day. Blue Whales are baleen whales like gray whales, finback
whales, and humpback whales. Baleen whales have no teeth. They
have a comb of hundreds of whalebone plates in their upper jaws.
The blue whale is the end of a food chain that starts with tiny
plankton which are small floating plants. Little shrimp feed on
the plankton. These little shrimp are called krill.
The blue whale eats thousands of these in one gulp. They open
their mouths wide as they swim through a cloud of krill floating
together in the water. It presses its tongue forward to force
the water out and traps the tiny krill in the baleen. Blue whales
have tiny throats only a few inches wide so they can only swallow
small things.
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