A new study revealed the amount of food eaten by what it described as “the largest animal known to the Earth in its history”, confirming that it eats 16 tons per day, and 1600 tons per year.
According to “ruetir”, “the first study of its kind concluded that the amount of food eaten by blue whales, which it described as the largest animal known to the Earth in its history, is about 16 tons of small fish known as krill per day in the North Pacific Ocean.”
The study said that “the researchers calculated the food that enters the belly of the whale daily, and monitored 321 whales, each one separately, in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans from 2010 to 2019,” stressing that they found that these giant marine mammals eat up to three times the amount of food. Previous estimates indicated were based on the stomach contents of hunted whales or through induction based on smaller marine mammals.
The study indicated that it included other types of whales, including the humpback whale, the fin whale, the bowhead whale, the right whale, the Antarctic minke whale and the Bryde whale, all of which also devoured amazing amounts of food.
“That’s the weight of a full-fledged school bus. A blue whale is the size and weight of a Boeing 737,” said study co-author Nick Benson. He expects the North Pacific humpback whale to eat nine tons of crustaceans per day, while fin whales consume eight tons.
“This is an unimaginable amount of food,” said Stanford marine biologist Matthew Savoca, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature. “But the sizes of large whales themselves are unimaginable. A blue whale is the size and weight of a Boeing 737.”
The blue whale, which is larger than the huge dinosaurs, can reach 33 meters in length and weigh up to 200 tons. Most baleen whales do not eat in all seasons, and they have an annual hunger cycle, they eat for about 100 days a year, usually in the summer breeding season, While you eat less the rest of the year.