0:05 [Music]
0:08 blue whales are the largest animals to
0:12 have ever existed as long as about three
0:15 school buses and as heavy as 15 blue
0:19 whales even outsized the dinosaurs the
0:22 whales marine habitat contributes to
0:24 their exceptional size the ocean
0:26 provides more room to grow and
0:28 eliminates one of the factors that
0:33 usually hinder animal size gravity
0:36 gravity limits the size of land animals
0:40 to what their skeletons can support the
0:43 oceans buoyancy spares marine mammals of
0:45 this limitation thereby allowing them to
0:50 grow unlike any other animal blue whales
0:52 have one of the loudest calls in the
0:59 animal kingdom measuring up to 188
1:01 decibels their song can be loud enough
1:03 to overpower the sounds of jackhammers
1:08 and jet engines the whales use their
1:09 powerful songs to communicate with each
1:13 other oftentimes from long distances [Music]
1:14 [Music]
1:17 these vocalizations which are deep moans
1:20 and rhythmic low frequency pulses have
1:30 blue whales age can be determined by its
1:34 earwax about every six months a new
1:36 layer of earwax forms inside a whale's
1:39 ear canal the wax primarily serves to
1:41 protect the ear canal and helps carry
1:44 sound waves into the whales inner ear
1:47 however this build up of wax layers
1:49 called an ear plug can be measured and
1:52 used to estimate a whales age much like
1:55 counting the Rings in a tree trunk the
1:57 average life span of a blue whale is
2:00 about 80 to 90 years but the oldest one
2:02 found based on its waxy ear plug count
2:12 blue whales can eat four tons of food a
2:14 day that's more than an African elephant
2:18 weighs despite the whales enormous size
2:21 their diet primarily consists of tiny
2:25 crustaceans called krill the whales use
2:27 their pouch like lower jaws to scoop up
2:30 swarms of thousands of krill floating in
2:30 the water
2:33 the whales then push the water out of
2:35 their mouths and through baleen bristles
2:38 lining their upper jaws the bristles are
2:40 thin enough to let water through but
2:46 thick enough to catch krill whale baleen
2:54 inaccurately referred to as whale bone
2:56 whale baleen is instead made of keratin
2:59 the same strong flexible material found
3:02 in fingernails keratin allowed baleen to
3:04 become an ideal material for structuring
3:07 clothes such as corsets collars hat
3:16 because of the high commercial value of
3:19 baleen and other whale body parts
3:32 today thankfully global bans on whaling
3:34 were put in place allowing the species
3:36 to slowly rebound [Music]
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