A Tale of a Whale Trivia Quiz

Answer: In warmer waters near the Equator

Female blue whales carry their young for twelve months. During that time they eat roughly four percent of their body weight daily, amounting to some sixty percent of their overall body weight throughout the summer foraging period. As to the calving process itself, marine biologists know next to nothing beyond that it takes place in the warmer waters at the southern extreme of the whales' migratory cycle, where they both mate and look after their young.

Answer: A full grown African elephant

At six to seven meters long and weighing two to three tons, a newborn blue whale calf is as long as a UPS truck and weighs as much (has the same mass) as a full-grown African elephant. Luckily, the water gives the baby whale buoyancy. Still, that's a big baby! And, she needs lots of nourishment. She drinks as much as two hundred fifty liters of milk and gains some one hundred thirteen kilos each day! In fact, estimates suggest that, since calves require two to four kilos of milk per one kilo of mass gain, mother blue whales likely produce from one hundred ten to three hundred twenty kilos of milk daily. Mother and calf have a close bond, especially during the up to a year nursing period. By the time the calf is weaned, she has gained roughly seventeen thousand kilos and has reached a length of sixteen meters.

The calf's first migration from the pod's winter breeding grounds to their summer feeding grounds offers lots of practice in hunting and eating solid foods. She will leave when her mother gives birth to her next calf, in some two or three years, although she will continue to grow for a few more years before reaching her full size.

Answer: Krill

Krill, the predominant food source for blue whales, are tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that swarm in great clouds in the oceans.

The blue whale's feeding method is simple; it swims forward at speed with mouth wide open (up to eighty-eight degrees), scooping up as much as two hundred twenty tons of seawater at a time and whatever is in it. Then the animal's remarkable anatomy comes into play. Members of a group of species called rorqual whales, they have pleated, expandable throats with sixty to eighty-eight grooves which allows the skin to expand during feeding. Moreover, they are baleen whales, their upper jaw lined with seventy to three hundred ninety-five black baleen plates.

During feeding, the whale squeezes the seawater out through the curtain-like baleen with pressure from the throat pouch and tongue. It then swallows the krill, releasing the water back into the sea. This style of feeding emphasizes quantity over selectivity. So, sometimes the whale inadvertently eats fish, octopus and other sea life. It is also surprisingly energy efficient. By targeting a particularly dense swarm, the whale can swallow up to five hundred kilos of krill, eating four hundred fifty-seven thousand calories in a single bite, that provides almost two hundred times the amount it burned in the lunge.

Furthermore, the whale maximizes calorie intake by increasing the number of lunges while selecting the thickest krill patches. This provides enough energy for everyday activities while allowing the whale to store additional energy for migration and reproduction. It is now known that a blue whale consumes sixteen tons of krill daily.

It is believed that, along with other baleen whale species, blue whales engage in behavior that minimizes direct competition with other baleen whales. Different species select different feeding spaces and times as well as different prey species.

Answer: The female

Blue whales generally reach full maturity at eight to ten years, the female being larger than the male. For North Atlantic blue whales, the pertinent lengths are twenty-one to twenty-four meters for females and twenty to twenty-one meters for males, with females weighing an average one hundred twelve tons and males around one hundred tons.

An adult blue whale is a slender, graceful creature, having a long, streamlined shape with mottled blue or grey back and pale underbelly.

The head is broad and long, with a distinctive U-shaped arch. Often extending up to a quarter of the animal's body length, the head is equipped with two blowholes for breathing that can spout nine to twelve meters. The eyes are about the size of grapefruit, small relative to the whale's size. Unsurprisingly, the blue whale is thought to have poor eyesight. Instead, it relies on its excellent hearing. While whales do not have external ears, their flesh and bone carry sound (which is conducted better through water than through air) to their ears that are buried in their skull.

The dorsal fins are also quite small for the whale's body size, and the pectoral flippers are long and thin. Finally, there is a small sickle-shaped dorsal fin located close to the tail and a large tail stock at the root of the wide and thin flukes.

Each whale has a unique marbling pattern of the skin, which humans use to identify individuals.

Answer: No

Blue whales live in nearly all parts of the world's oceans except for the Arctic. They are rarely seen close to shore, since krill tend to gather in the open ocean, and the whales prefer to remain there as well in waters deeper than two hundred sixteen meters in search of them. In the North Atlantic, blue whales can be found near Greenland, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

In general, blue whale populations migrate vast distances between their summer feeding areas near the Poles and their winter breeding grounds in equatorial waters, although other patterns have been observed, such as year-round residency and partial or age/sex-based migration. The traveling speed for blue whales ranges widely from five to thirty kilometers per hour. They eat very little en route, surviving mostly on their blubber reserves, for up to four months at a time. It is thought that, once arrived at their destination, the whales use memory to locate the best feeding areas. Despite their massive size, blue whale migrations are hard to keep track of, so we don't know much about specific migratory routes.

Answer: No

Whether on the move or at home, blue whales are gregarious. Like other whale and dolphin species, they communicate using both vocalizations and body language. To produce calls, they push air through specialized air sacs near their blowholes. The fundamental frequency for blue whale vocalizations ranges from eight to twenty-five Hertz. The production of vocalizations may vary by region, season, behavior, and time of day. Blue whales can even "talk to each other" over hundreds of kilometers. To do so, they produce songs and sounds of up to 188 decibels. That's louder than a jet plane!

Communication via body language may involve swimming in a synchronous pattern, slapping pectoral or tail fins on the surface of the water, or breaching (jumping out of the water and landing on one side).

Answer: Any or all of these at one time or another

It is agreed that blue whales are usually solitary and have no well-defined social structure other than mother-calf bonds; yet, pairs and small groups seem to be common. Moreover, when food is plentiful, they gather in groups or pods of more than 50 individuals.

Answer: No

As with so much else about these wonderful creatures, little is known of blue whales' mating behavior, or their breeding and calving areas. Scientists do know that the species mates from fall to winter. They believe, moreover, that they are polygynous, with males competing for females.

Answer: The ear

The natural lifespan of a blue whale is thought to be approximately eighty to ninety years, though individuals may exceed this.

Obviously, once the whale reaches maturity, researchers can't rely on length to guesstimate age as they do with juveniles. However, they have found an ingenious method that relies on a curious aspect of blue whale physiology. The ears, buried in the skull, accumulate wax. But this is not just any earwax. Each year, a light and dark layer of wax is laid corresponding to fasting (during migration) and feeding time. Each set is thus an indicator of age, not unlike tree rings. The age of the oldest blue whale determined using this earwax or ear plug method was one hundred ten years.

In addition, female blue whales develop scars or corpora albicantia on their ovaries every time they ovulate. Presumably, counting these scars can allow a researcher to estimate the whale's age. I haven't come across any practical methods for determining a whale's age while it is still alive.

Answer: All of them

At one time there may have been over 350,000 blue whales in our oceans. Due to aggressive hunting, in the first quarter of the Twenty-first Century there remain some 10,000 to 25,000 worldwide. As such, they are recognized as an endangered species by several national and international conservation bodies. Though populations have seen some rebound, this gentle giant, largest animal ever to grace our planet, remains at risk from Man's activities.

These threats include vessel strikes, entanglement, ocean noise, over-fishing of their prey, and climate change impacts.