The message is brief about the blue whale. Amazing and interesting facts about whales and dolphins. Questions about the blue whale report

The blue whale is the largest whale, mammal and animal of our time. They inhabit almost all the waters of the oceans, but the main habitat is the Arctic and Antarctic waters. During the glaciation of the main habitat, blue whales are forced to migrate to warmer climatic zones. Due to a more meager diet different from their main habitat, they noticeably lose weight, so they are forced to use their fat reserves.

Blue whales are the largest representatives of their class. On average, the size of an adult is about 24 meters and weighs 140 tons, but there are specimens up to 33 meters long and weighing about 200 tons. As a rule, females are larger than males.

The giant's body is equipped with a whole system of fins.

The tail lobe resembles the fin of fish, but is located in a different plane, being a powerful engine. The pectoral fins are practically atrophied and have a narrow, pointed shape. The dorsal fin is strongly developed and, together with the elongated streamlined shape of the body, makes it possible to develop high speed in the water.

The blue whale has well-developed sense organs, it should be noted an excellent sense of touch, as well as sight and hearing. The diet of the mammal is krill and crustaceans. In the oral cavity is a series of plates, which is called a whalebone. When swallowing a large amount of water, the whale pushes the water out with the help of the tongue, and the plankton remains in the plates.

The animal breathes air, the reserves of which are replenished by emerging to the surface. When immersed, it pushes air out through a hole in the surface of the head.

An important role for the blue whale is played by a layer of subcutaneous fat, as a natural defense of the body in a cold habitat. Therefore, its reserves have to be constantly replenished.

By their nature, these animals prefer to stay alone, or in small groups of up to four individuals. The gestation period for the female is 11 months. The baby is born in the water. Weight is 3 tons, length is about 7 meters. It feeds on mother's milk for 7-8 months. The life expectancy of a whale is quite high and reaches 120 years.

The blue whale is listed in the Red Book.

Option 2

The blue minke is the largest animal. It is possible that he is larger than all the existing creatures on Earth. Length - 33 meters, and weight - more than 150 tons. Despite its size, such a giant feeds on krill, small fish and crustaceans.

Life expectancy - from 80 to 90 years, there were also those who managed to live for about 110 years! There are 3 varieties of blue minke: northern, southern and dwarf. The difference between them is only in size. They communicate with voice signals with a frequency of 8 - 20 Hz.

The value of the number of these creatures is not exactly known, but they are few. They live throughout the oceans, and more precisely, they are found off the coast of Australia, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Brazil, Great Britain and many other countries and islands. Minke whales have very poor eyesight, smell and almost no taste, but hearing and tactile perception are well developed.

Incredible facts about blue whales

The mass of the heart reaches 1 ton!
The process of sleep in minke whales is very curious. They are looking for shallow places, because the whale is able to easily drown due to its weight. A whale is not much heavier than water. When the minke whale falls asleep, it sinks to the bottom, then pushes off with its tail and emerges, while breathing in. And so the process is repeated over and over again.
Keith can stay awake for 3 months.
The tails of these mammals, like our fingerprints, are completely different from others.
During sleep in whales, 1/2 of the brain is in working order.
In the distant past, there was a theory that our planet lies on 33 whales.
The tongue of minke whales weighs 4 tons! If you dream up, it is possible to fit up to 50 people there.
Minke whales are able to eat nothing for about 10 months.
For 1 second, the whale exhales 2000 liters of air! And not even a mouth, but a blowhole, which is located at the back of the head.
These animals can not breathe for 3-4 hours.
They don't have ears, they listen with their lower jaws.
Despite the fact that whales do not have vocal cords, they sing for 30 minutes. By the way, of the mammals, only humans and minke whales can sing.

That's all the basic data about the largest mammal of our time and just an interesting animal. Thank you for your attention.

2, 3, 7 grade. The world

  • City of Paris - message report

    Paris is the capital of France. Founded already in the 3rd century BC! Its dimensions are 105.4 km2. The number of inhabitants is 2,196,936 and the population density is 21,283 persons/km2.

  • Writer Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. Life and art

    Lyudmila Stefanovna Petrushevskaya (born in 1938), real name Dolores Yakovleva, is one of the brightest representatives of Russian literature, which, in addition to the prose writer and poetess, is a famous playwright and screenwriter.

  • Inventions of Ancient China (Chinese in Antiquity) - Post Report

    Chinese civilization has made many discoveries that have made life easier for the whole world. They helped to ease it, while giving new knowledge, made life richer and simpler.

  • The most popular team sport in the world is football. Today it is played by a huge number of guys and even girls. The exact year and place of origin of this sport is still unknown.

  • Patrons - message report (grade 5 social science) in Russia and in the world

    A philanthropist is a person who, free of charge and voluntarily, provides financial and other assistance to museums and libraries, schools and kindergartens, sports clubs and hospitals.

Municipal educational institution

"Secondary school No. 5"

The blue whale is the largest animal on earth

The world

Bogush Danil, 3 A class

Teacher: Friedrich

Valentina Alexandrovna

Uray, 2009

1. Introduction. cetaceans.

2. The blue whale is the largest animal on Earth.

3. Size, weight, length.

4. Habitat.

5. Whale cubs.

6. Nutrition.

7. Do you know that…

8. Whale and people. Why kill whales?

9. Research.

10. Conclusion.


1. cetaceans.

And this page is sea,

On it you will not see the earth.

Breaking the steep wave

Ships pass by.

Whales flicker like shadows

wandering starfish,

And the leaves of underwater plants

Rocks like the wind, water.

At the bottom of this blue page

Dark as the depths of the seas.

Here the fish can glow

In the dark, where there are no lanterns ...

Life on planet Earth originated in the ocean more than 3.5 million years ago. Once upon a time, almost all living things lived in the ocean. Even now there are many more animals and plants than on land.

The most perfect adaptation to life in the aquatic environment, of course, is in cetaceans - they completely lost contact with the shore, and their development proceeded differently than in pinnipeds: the hind limbs disappeared, and the tail (absent in pinnipeds) turned into a powerful caudal fin, by its purpose and a shape resembling the same fin in fish, only located not in a vertical, but in a horizontal plane.

Cetaceans are exclusively aquatic mammals. They live, give birth to cubs, feed them with milk, breathe atmospheric air and, when the time comes, they die in the water element.

Cetaceans are the largest animals living on Earth. Zoologists divide this detachment into two large groups: toothed whales and baleen whales. Toothed whales include about 80 species, the group of baleen whales covers only 10 species. Toothed whales have a length of 1.3 meters to 20 meters and a weight of 30 kg. up to 40 tons. The length of baleen whales ranges from 5 to 35 meters, and their weight is from 4.5 to 135 tons. Instead of fins, whales use modified forelimbs; the hind limbs have practically disappeared.

As the name implies, toothed whales have teeth in their mouths. They are predators and prey on cephalopods, fish, as well as penguins and seals. The most famous of the toothed whales is the sperm whale. Its length reaches 20 meters, and its weight is up to 40 tons.

Whales, like all good swimmers, have an elongated, cigar-shaped body shape. The main engine is the tail blade - it is similar to the rear fin of fish, but located in a horizontal plane. The forelimbs are turned into fins - with their help, the whale stabilizes its body in the water column. The hind limbs are so small that they are simply not visible from the outside. Many whales still have a dorsal fin - it is most developed in the fastest ones. That is why the fin, most often you can find out that these magnificent animals are swimming somewhere nearby.

2. The blue whale is the largest animal on earth.

Whales vary in size. Some of the smaller dolphins are the size and weight of a human. But on the other hand, the largest whales are real giants among animals; they have not and never had equals among other inhabitants of the Earth.

It should be noted that such large sizes are another consequence of the aquatic lifestyle of whales. It has been noted that, in general, giants are less common on land than in the sea, and even those do not reach whale records. On land, giants like the blue minke whale would simply be crushed under their own weight. And the water holds them.

The largest animal on our planet is the blue whale. He is even bigger than the giant dinosaurs that lived on Earth millions of years ago! He got his name because of the bluish color of the back and sides.

The whale breathes air. He collects it on the surface, dives, and when immersed, he pushes jets of air through a narrow hole at the top of his head, raising tall fountains.

Skin covering. In the course of evolution, cetaceans moving in a dense aquatic environment formed an easily streamlined body shape, an elastic skin that could delay the appearance of turbulent pulsations in the boundary layer of water, and a special locomotor organ was formed - the tail fin - an effective flapping mover set in motion by strong muscles.

In the brainstem of whales is the medulla oblongata. Cetaceans make numerous and varied sounds, which can be described in a descriptive way as roars, moans, lowings, squeals, crackles, trills, creaks, blows, rumbles, shots, etc. By now it can be considered established that all species of cetaceans make sounds.

The subcutaneous fat layer is very important for whales - it allows them to maintain a constant high body temperature. After all, water takes away more heat than air, so a warm-blooded animal will rather cool down in cool water than in frosty air.

The blue whale is accustomed to ply the world's oceans, traveling alone, occasionally in pairs, and can live up to 120 years.


3 .Size, weight, length.

The blue whale is without a doubt the largest animal that has ever existed on our planet. The weight of an adult whale can be more than twice the weight of a Brachiosaurus, the largest of the dinosaurs of ancient times, and about thirty times the weight of a male modern African elephant.

This is a true giant, its average length is about 26 m, and the maximum recorded is 33.5 m; the average weight is 150 tons, which corresponds to the weight of about 2400 people. The whale's eyes are so far apart that it cannot see the same object with both eyes.

It reaches a length of 33 meters and weighs 150 tons. This is the same weight as 40 elephants, or 180 bulls, or 150 cars, and it would take 50 three-ton trucks to transport it. But the largest whale was recorded at 33m 58cm and weighed 190 tons, and the weight was established based on its remains.


4. Habitat.

Whales, like other marine animals, evolved from land mammals. Millions of years ago, the abundance of food probably attracted these animals to the water. As a result, they adapted to the new environment. Even though whales can roam freely in the sea, they only live in limited areas. This is because there are few places in the sea - especially in the regions of the Arctic and Antarctica, where there is a sufficient amount of plankton.

Freezing waters cause blue whales to migrate to warm tropical regions where there is no plankton, so whales' stomachs are empty at wintering grounds.

Whales live in the waters of the Arctic and Antarctica. But freezing waters cause blue whales to migrate to warmer tropical regions.

During their seasonal migrations, blue whales cover very large distances. In summer, they live in polar waters, grazing among huge krill colonies near the edge of the pack ice, and as winter approaches, they move to warm equatorial waters, undertaking journeys of thousands of miles. One whale is known to have traveled over 3,000 km. in just 47 days. These long journeys take them away from the pastures, and for a long period, sometimes up to four months, they do not eat at all, consuming their accumulated resources.


5. Whale cubs.

A newborn whale is the largest baby in the world. It is born 7 meters long and weighs 3 tons. They feed on mother's milk and drink 600 liters of milk per day, gaining 100 kg daily and growing by 4 cm. Milk feeding lasts 7 months until the length of the kitten reaches 15 meters. The cub becomes an adult at the age of 5 to 10 years.

  1. Nutrition.

A creature of this gigantic size needs a huge amount of food. An adult blue whale consumes about a million calories a day, which is equivalent to 1 tonne of krill, a small, shrimp-like crustacean that forms the basis of its diet.

The blue whale feeds exclusively on plankton. He needs up to 4 tons per day, which is 4 million shrimp. When one day they checked the contents of the stomach of a whale, they found 425 kg in it. krill. During the transition to life in the aquatic environment, they lost their teeth, instead of them, whalebones grew, through which the whale sips water. It can stay up to 2 hours at a depth of about 500 meters. Then he rushes to the surface, swallowing plankton in huge quantities. With its mouth half closed, the whale pumps out water and traps plankton in the crevices of its mustache. Food remains on them like a sieve, which he licks off with his tongue. The tongue of a whale weighs 3 tons, which is as much as one elephant weighs. He usually swallows food by diving. In the waters of the Arctic, whales feed on three types of crustaceans. There is more oxygen and carbon dioxide in ice water than in warm water, therefore life in cold waters is richer and more diverse. The thickness of the tongue of the blue whale exceeds 3 meters, and the weight is more than that of an elephant.

The whale's eyes are so far apart that it cannot see the same object with both eyes. The heart of a blue whale weighs 0.5 tons. Whales live 40-50 years.


7. Do you know that…

More recently, scientists have established how these mammals sleep. Whales must inhale and exhale air every 3-4 minutes. To do this, the whale emerges, with force releases a fountain of air, steam and splashes of water, inhales fresh air and again goes under the water. Moreover, the whale maintains this rhythm even in a dream - it sleeps not on the surface, but under water, regularly rising for the next exhalation-inhalation. It turns out that the whale sleeps "by turns" with itself. The brain of a whale, like that of any mammal, consists of halves of the hemispheres. In all "normal" animals, the entire brain sleeps. That's why sometimes it's so hard to wake us up. In a whale, the halves of the cerebral hemisphere sleep alternately: when one sleeps, the other is awake and makes sure that the regularity of the entire complex breathing procedure is not disturbed.


8. Whales and people. Why kill whales?

Whalers were attracted by the size of the blue whale. Its huge body was processed into fish oil, and whalebone was used to produce korats. Between 1930 and 1931, 30,000 whales were killed off the coast of Antarctica. There are currently 10,000 of them.

Blue whales are listed in the Red Book, so their numbers are growing. However, it is necessary to protect these animals for another 100 years, so that it can be said that they are not in danger of extinction.

Tokyo has long sought to lift restrictions on the industry. The Japanese government has achieved an increase in quotas for catching whales for research purposes, but instead of laboratories, whale meat often ends up in markets and menus of expensive restaurants.

This position of Japan causes outrage among public organizations involved in the protection of animals. In the past few days alone, two incidents have occurred in Antarctic waters involving ships from the American whale protection organization Sea Shepherd.

The Sea Shepard ships are looking for Japanese whaling ships, trying to interfere with their activities and thereby force them to leave Antarctica. On February 12, this led to a collision between the two ships, as a result of which the ship of the whale defenders received a 30-centimeter hole, but was able to return to port, and the Japanese ship received minor damage. A few days earlier, defenders of the sea giants had pelted another whaling ship with bottles of a scented chemical, slashing two crew members from shattered bottle glass.

February 19 is World Whale Day. It is considered a day to protect not only whales, but also all marine mammals and other living creatures of the seas and oceans. The day commemorates the fact that in 1986, after hundreds of years of ruthless extermination, the International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling. It is still in effect today and means that the hunting of large whales, as well as the trade in whale meat, is prohibited throughout the world. However, pro-whaling countries are making every effort to lift the ban. A few days ago, an international conference was held in Tokyo, the main purpose of which was to push the IWC to lift the moratorium.

Greenland Eskimos kill about 170 whales a year - the third largest fishery in the world after Norway and Japan, which take 600 or more whales annually. The IWC considers the west and east coasts of Greenland to be home to two distinct populations, and allocate separate quotas for each. On the much more populated west coast, about 90% of the whales are caught. As a rule, about 150 minke whales and 10 fin whales are caught annually on the west coast, and about 10 minke whales on the east coast.


9. Research.

Long before the appearance of people on our planet, the sea and the ocean were mastered by marine mammals - cetaceans and pinnipeds. The finds of paleontologists confirm the existence of whales and seals 26 million years ago in the Cenozoic period. In the process of evolution, the species composition of marine mammals has undergone significant changes. Epochs changed and with them the conditions of existence, some species died out, others, on the contrary, managed to adapt and increase their numbers. To date, 119 species of marine mammals have survived on our planet, which are combined into two orders - cetaceans (Cetacea) and pinnipeds (Pinnipedia), the latter is less numerous and includes 32 species.

Marine mammals combine animals of various lengths and body weights. Here you can meet small seals and dolphins, whose weight does not exceed 50 kg, and large giants such as the blue whale, whose weight can reach 160 tons. Whales, dolphins and seals are a rather peculiar group of marine animals that have adapted well to the external environment. They have adapted to living in different climatic zones - arctic and antarctic, boreal and even subtropical. They can be found singly, in small scattered groups and in large herds.


10. Conclusion.

Summarizing the above, it should be noted that since the distant ancestors of whales were terrestrial mammals that made a complete break with land in ancient times, the aquatic lifestyle could not but affect the structure of the body of these amazing animals.


Literature.

1. I.P. Sokolovsky "About rare animals of the world" M., "Enlightenment", 1987

2. Great Encyclopedia "Why", M. ROSMEN, 2004

3. Illustrated encyclopedia for the curious. M., ROSMEN. 2005

4. "Planet Earth". Encyclopedia. M., ROSMEN, 2005

5. "Know the world." Encyclopedia.

6. Animals of the Red Book. USSR, 1989

Conversation "The most interesting thing about the blue whale"

Klochkova Natalya Konstantinovna, teacher of mathematics, MBOU "Bukharai secondary school", village of Bukharai, Zainsky district
Material Description: The event is dedicated to the largest marine animal - the whale. It introduces interesting facts about the blue whale. This material will be of interest to class teachers and it can be used for class hours.
Target: acquaintance with the largest whale, instilling a sensitive and careful attitude towards animals.
Tasks:
to acquaint with an amazing animal on our planet;
to develop a cognitive interest in the world around us, to broaden one's horizons;
develop a love for animals.

Guys, today I would like to talk with you about amazing animals - about whales. What do you know about whales? Who are they? Where do they live?
Whales are marine mammals from the order of cetaceans, not related to either dolphins or porpoises. Killer whales and pilot whales have the word "whale" in their informal names, although they are strictly classified as dolphins (see material from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia).
The largest whale in the world is the blue one. The whale lives in the seas and oceans. Whales live up to 50 years. The age of a blue whale can be determined after its death by examining the wax plugs in its ear. A layer is added every year.

Remember guys that whales are not fish. They breathe not with gills, like fish, but with lungs, like all mammals. That is why they need to rise to the surface of the water from time to time to take a breath. Then there is a fountain above sea level. The blue whale fountain can be up to 9 meters high. In 1 second, a whale inhales 2000 liters of air.


The length of the whale reaches up to 33 meters, and the weight of the most adult whale can exceed 150 tons.


The heart of the blue whale is the largest heart in the world. It is comparable in size to a car. It weighs approximately 700 kg. He needs to pump about 8000 liters of blood. Beats once every ten seconds. The beating can be detected at a distance of three kilometers.


The eye of a blue whale weighs about 1 kg. He is very small in relation to his large body.


The blue whale has the longest and largest tongue. It can reach up to 3 m. A full football team, about 50 people, can stand on the tongue.


The throat of the blue whale is small. The whale can only swallow the smallest fish. Whales can go without sleep for 100 days. They can live 8 months without food. A whale eats up to 230 kilograms of fish. The throat of a blue whale can fit 100 people.


Blue whales usually swim at a speed of 15 km/h, and a frightened whale can swim at a speed of 40 km/h.


The blue whale has the loudest voice. It makes sounds that can be heard within a radius of 800 km.


The blue whale has an aorta so large that a person can fit in it.


Guys, what do you think, have whales always lived in the water? Well, of course not! Several million years ago, the ancestors of today's cetaceans lived on land. At first they moved to shallow water, and after a while they completely went to sea. At the same time, the hair completely disappeared from their body, and the front paws turned into fins.


The tail took the form not vertical, like fish, but horizontal, for comfortable swimming.



Due to their large size, blue whales have no natural predators. A threat to a blue whale can only be a collision with ships. The main enemy of blue whales is man.



I would like to end the conversation with a poem by Elena Shvetsova.
Save the dying
Marine Mammals!
whales, dolphins, cats
Save from the hunters!
The sea cows were knocked out
In the world for profit -
They don't bite
And they don't defend well.
Whales, loyal to habits,
Don't attack first.
And although they are huge,
But at sea they are very modest.
Today I want to say:
Let the people take care
About those who swim in the sea -
Today this is the main thing.
Creative homework: draw a poster for the protection of animals.

elegant giant


The blue whale, also known as the blue whale and vomited, is the largest animal that has ever existed on Earth. The weight of this giant is equal to the weight of almost 40 elephants, and its fountain soars to a height of 9 meters. Blue whales are eternal wanderers. They do not form large herds, usually kept alone or in groups of 2-5 individuals. In summer, they feed in the cold, plankton-rich seas of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (with the exception of the Arctic Ocean), and in winter they migrate to temperate and warm waters for breeding. In Russian waters, blue whales are found in the Bering and Chukchi Seas.
Despite its monstrous size, the blue whale is incredibly elegant. The outlines of its streamlined, cigar-shaped body, ending in a powerful tail fin, can be the envy of any submarine! Its dorsal fin is low, offset towards the tail. Along the underside of the throat and belly, like all minke whales, there are 70-120 shallow folds up to 10 cm wide.
The largest blue whale was caught in 1909 off the South Shetland Islands. It was a female (they are somewhat larger than males) 33.3 m long.


monotonous diet


The blue whale is a representative of baleen whales. Instead of teeth (they are laid in embryonic development, but never erupt), they have flexible horny plates - a whalebone - on the upper jaw in two parallel rows. Their inner edges, crushed into individual fibers, form a sieve that serves to strain out plankton or small fish from the water.
The blue whale has from 540 to 800 such plates, about 1 m long, and the frequency of the "sieve" allows you to effectively detain euphausiid crustaceans 5-9 cm in size. It is these planktonic crustaceans, known as "krill", that make up the diet of our giant.
Swimming into the accumulation of krill, the whale draws a full mouth of water, and then, using a huge (weighing 3-4 tons!) tongue as a piston, pushes it through the whalebone and swallows the remaining crustaceans.
Experts study the diet of blue whales by taking apart samples of their droppings, which have a bright pink color and an indescribably disgusting smell. But, as they say, science requires sacrifice!


The same fountain


Like all baleen whales, the nostrils of the blue whale are shifted to the top of the head and are equipped with two holes - blowholes. During diving, they are tightly closed and open when the whale emerges to the surface to take a series of breaths.
The water vapor contained in the exhaled air condenses in the cold, and the famous fountain soars up. The shape, direction, height of the fountain differ in different species of cetaceans, and experienced whalers have long been able to determine from afar by these signs who exactly they have to deal with. The blue whale has a very dense fountain, in the form of a narrow cone widening upwards, 6-9 m high.


whale songs


The development of the sense organs in baleen whales has its own characteristics. These water giants are practically devoid of smell, can hardly appreciate the taste of food and are rather short-sighted, but they have excellent sense of touch and hearing. There is not even a hint of ear holes on the head of the whales: they perceive sound waves with the lower jaw, through which the vibrations enter the middle and inner ear.
By now, everyone knows that toothed whales use echolocation to find prey and navigate underwater, it is found (although not so well developed) in some species of baleen whales. Perhaps blue whales have it too. But it is known for sure that they use infrasound (a low-frequency sound inaccessible to our ear) to communicate with their relatives.

Blue whales do not produce complex and long roulades, as is typical for the most virtuoso singers of the animal world - humpback whales, but their "songs" are the loudest and bassiest. They sound in the range of 8-20 Hz and reach a power of 188 decibels. The "conversations" of blue whales are confidently caught by special devices at a distance of several tens of kilometers, but there is an opinion that they can serve as a means of communication between animals separated by hundreds of kilometers of sea spaces.
Due to their huge size, adult blue whales have practically no enemies in nature, but their cubs are sometimes attacked by killer whales and white sharks.
The blue whales themselves feed almost exclusively on crustaceans - euphausiids (krill). Sometimes small fish and squids accidentally turn out to be in the mass of crustaceans, but the blue whale cannot swallow anything larger than the size of a soccer ball - its esophagus is surprisingly narrow.


Eight meter baby


Little is known about the family life of blue whales, but it has been noticed that the male sometimes stays close to his chosen one for a long time. Mating occurs in wintering areas, and after 11-12 months of pregnancy in the same waters, the female gives birth to a cub (very rarely - two). This "baby" weighs about 2.5 tons and reaches a length of 8 m! It literally grows by leaps and bounds: it gains 40-90 kg in weight per day, drinking from 200 to 600 liters of milk containing up to 50% fats and proteins.
He does not have to suckle - the muscles of the nipple contract, and the milk is injected into his mouth in a tight stream. Milk feeding in blue whales lasts about 7 months, and during this time the whale grows up to 16 m in length, but it apparently reaches its physical flowering and sexual maturity only by 10 years.


Between life and death


For the time being, fate kept the blue whales. Due to the huge size, strength, speed and living far from the coast, such prey was "too tough" for whalers. It was also important that the carcasses of killed minke whales sink, and they had to be towed to the shore for butchering.
However, everything changed in the middle of the 19th century, when sailboats and oar whaleboats were replaced by steam ships, and instead of hand harpoons, whalers were armed with harpoon cannons and harpoons with powder charges. Dangerous whale hunting turned into a brutal slaughter, and the blue whale, due to its size, became the most desirable prey. They hunted him primarily for the sake of fat (blubber) and whalebone, as well as for meat.
In the first quarter of the 20th century, floating whaling factories went out to sea, each of which could harvest and process dozens of whales a day, and this brought blue whales to the brink of complete destruction. In 1948, the International Whaling Commission set quotas for the extraction of whales of various species, but only after 1966, blue whale hunting was banned, although not all countries (including the USSR) immediately and unconditionally joined this decision.
By that time, about 380,000 blue whales had been caught in the 20th century alone. And some of their populations were knocked out almost completely. To date, their total number is estimated at 10-25 thousand individuals.
On February 19, 1986, the International Whaling Commission imposed a total ban on industrial whaling and the sale of whale meat worldwide. Ecologists celebrate this date as the Day for the Protection of Whales and All Marine Mammals.
The blue whale is listed as threatened by the IUCN*. Its future is by no means rosy. Like many other marine life, whales are being harmed by ocean pollution and food depletion.


The life of a whale in numbers


During feeding, the whale dives to a depth of 100-200 m, emerging every 10-20 minutes. The record diving depth is 500 m, and the time spent under water is 36 minutes. The average speed of a blue whale is about 10-12 km/h.
The mouth of a blue whale holds up to 90 tons of water and crustaceans. During the day, he can eat 4-6 tons of krill, accumulating energy reserves, which he spends during a long fast in wintering areas.
The tail fin of the blue whale reaches a width of 7 m or more.


Brief description of the blue whale


Class: mammals
Squad: cetaceans
Suborder: baleen whales
Family: striped
Genus: minke whales
View: blue whale
Latin name: Balaenoptera musculus
The size: average body length - 25-27 m, maximum - up to 33.5 m
The weight: 120-150 t
Coloring: the top is dark gray with a bluish honey agaric, with spots and a marbled pattern, the bottom is light, the lower jaw is dark, the baleen is pitch black
Lifespan: 80-90 years old

Our reference:
* IUCN is an abbreviation International Union for Conservation of Nature(fr. Union internationale pour la conservation de la nature). Founded in 1948. This is an international non-profit organization dedicated to highlighting the problems of preserving the planet's biodiversity. In particular, it draws up lists of animal and plant species that need special protection in different regions of the planet.
The IUCN headquarters is located in Gland, Switzerland.
The Union unites 82 states (including the Russian Federation), 111 government agencies, more than 800 non-governmental organizations and about 10,000 scientists and experts from 180 countries of the world.

The message about the blue whale can be used in preparation for the lesson. The story about the blue whale for children can be supplemented.

Report on the topic "Blue Whale"

Blue whale- the largest whale in the world, and the largest animal on our planet.

Blue whale: a brief description for children

The length of the blue whale can reach 33 meters, and the weight of the blue whale reaches 150 tons. This animal has a relatively slender build and a narrow muzzle. The color of the body within the species is monotonous: most individuals are gray with a blue tint and gray spots scattered throughout the body, making the skin of the animal look like marble.

The blue whale feeds mainly on plankton and inhabits the entire oceans.

During the day, the blue whale eats about 1 ton of krill (that's about 1 million calories), which basically feeds on it. The whale ingests krill, along with thousands of liters of water, swimming through its accumulations, and then filters it by pushing all this mass with its tongue through the whalebone. By the way, the tongue of a blue whale weighs more than an elephant, and the thickness is more than 3 meters.

Blue whales swim in groups of 2 or 3, and sometimes alone. He tries not to swim to the shore. Several groups may gather in places of accumulation of plankton. The speed of the blue whale is 9-13 km / h. If the whale is frightened or runs away, then it develops a speed of 25 km / h, and releases small fountains every 30 seconds.

Have questions?

Report a typo

Text to be sent to our editors: