Balaenoptera musculus - The Blue Whale

David Attenborough’s description of the blue whale will serve better than anything I can put here. There is a film of David describing the animal here:

David Attenborough and a blue whale

“Dwarfed by the vast expanse of the open ocean, the biggest animal that has ever lived on our planet. A blue whale, 30 metres long and weighing over 200 tonnes. It's far bigger than even the biggest dinosaur. Its tongue weighs as much as an elephant, its heart is the size of a car and some of its blood vessels are so wide you could swim down them. Its tail alone is the width of a small aircraft's wings. Its streamlining, close to perfection, enables it to cruise at 20 knots. It's one of the fastest animals in the sea. The ocean's largest inhabitant feeds almost exclusively on one of the smallest: krill, a crustacean just a few centimetres long. Gathered in a shoal, krill stain the sea red. A single blue whale in a day can consume 40 million of them. Despite the enormous size of blue whales, we know very little about them. Their migration routes are still a mystery and we have no idea where they go to breed. They are a dramatic reminder of how much we still have to learn about the ocean and the creatures that live there. Our planet is a Blue Planet.”

If you don’t know David Attenborough, he is a naturalist and broadcaster who has been making television, more or less, since television began. In the UK he is a national hero and certainly a hero of mine. It is to him that very many scientists, teachers, film makers and hobbyists owe their passions and their careers and his wonderful description of the blue whale above was one of the key moments for me in becoming interested in whales in general. But this is not about David, it is about whales, I shall try to furnish you with a few more important details about these animals.

The species name musculus was given by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. This name could mean either ‘muscular’ or ‘mouse-like’, so the name contains a pleasing pun, which cannot have been an accident on the great taxonomist's part. Perhaps we should call it the mouse whale. The common English name blue whale comes again from Svend Foyn, the Norwegian whaler who invented the harpoon gun and thus sped up the destruction of these animals (blue whales are one of the most endangered species, with only a few thousand left – the Antarctic population was reduced by 99.85%, getting as low as 360 animals). Foyn called it the ‘blåhval’, and it is sort of blueish (the Welsh call it Morfil Glas – greyish-blue whale). In any case the name comes from one of the greatest killers of whales in history so perhaps we could use a new name. 

Flukes

The first published description of the animal came from Robert Sibbald, the 17th century Scottish scientist, in 1694, and for a long time the whale was known as Sibbald’s Rorqual. In Moby Dick Herman Melville called it ‘Sulphur Bottom’ because of a yellowish film of diatoms that sometime accumulates on the whales’ skin. In the same book there is also the first known use of the term ‘blue whale’, though, so who knows - there have been many names in English. Let’s hope to discover some alternatives.

Blue whale baleen

They can reach speeds of up to 50km per hour at a sprint, but typically cruise at around 20km per hour over longer periods when migrating and can travel almost 300 miles in a day. When traveling like this they tend to swim a little way (around 13 metres) below the surface to avoid the drag of waves. With a lung capacity of around 5000 litres, they can dive to great depths (1660 feet is their record) and stay submerged for 40 minutes, or perhaps even an hour, though no one is quite sure.15 minutes is more common for a dive.  

Building a blue whale - 1938

Like so many people in London and the UK, one of my earliest exposures to the idea of whales came through the Natural History Museum, with its huge mammal hall and the collection of cetacean skeletons and models there. The blue whale model was built in the 1930s and is still there today - few people realise she's now older than most blue whales ever get. As well as the amazing model, there is Hope. Hope is the name given to the 25-metre-long skeleton of a female blue whale, which was attacked by whalers in the 19th century. She escaped but died later from her wounds and washed up on a beach in Ireland. The museum purchased the whale for £250 in 1891 and she has been part of the collection since. The Hintze Hall, the huge main entrance hall to the museum, has housed Dippy the Diplodocus since 1905 and many (including me) were sad to see Dippy go this year. But the fact is, dinosaurs are extinct and whales are endangered. The public needs to be made aware of the importance of changing its behaviour to make sure the whales don't go the way of the dinosaurs, and making Hope the centrepiece for the Hintze Hall is one step towards achieving that. Good luck NHM!

Blue whale model at NHM London

Hope in a lunging position in the Hintze Hall, NHM London