The Largest Animal Alive

The largest animal alive is the blue whale. Fully grown, these great creatures reach a length of over 30 metres and weigh as much as twenty-four large elephants, or more than 1,500 men. The heart of a blue whale is more than a metre in diameter.

The blue whale is not a fish, even though it spends its entire life in the sea. Whales are mammals, just like us. A mother whale gives birth to a live baby whale, not an egg. She feeds her baby with her own milk. While fish are cold-blooded, whales are warm-blooded, and they have lungs and breathe air, like us.

For all its size, a blue whale feeds mainly on this shrimps. It is harmless to man. Unfortunately for the blue whales, men are not harmless to them. So many blue whales have been hunted and killed that very few of these magnificent animals are now left alive.

Blue whales may reach over 24 m (80 ft) in length; mature females are usually slightly longer than mature males. A small dorsal fin is set far back on the body. The skin has a light-gray-and-white mottled pattern, which appears light blue when the whale is just below the surface of the water on a sunny day. The mottled pattern, which is unique to each animal, has been used by researchers to identify individual whales.

Blue whales were heavily hunted for oil, baleen, meat, and other products from the 1930s to the 1960s. This hunting nearly caused the extinction of the species. They are now protected and may gradually be returning in several areas of their range; since 1985, blue whales feeding in Monterey Bay, California, have become a familiar sight in late summer. The blue whale is classified as an endangered species.