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5/16/12

Blue Whale So Amazing Nice To See Images Collection

Description Of Blue Whale:

The blue whale is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales. At 30 metres in length and 180 metric tons or more in weight.It is the largest known animal to have ever existed.

The blue whale has a long tapering body that appears stretched in comparison with the stockier build of other whales. The head is flat, U-shaped and has a prominent ridge running from the blowhole to the top of the upper lip. The front part of the mouth is thick with baleen plates.Around 300 plates hang from the upper jaw, running 0.5 m (1.6 ft) back into the mouth. Between 70 and 118 grooves (called ventral pleats) run along the throat parallel to the body length. These pleats assist with evacuating water from the mouth after lunge feeding

The dorsal fin is small, visible only briefly during the dive sequence. Located around three-quarters of the way along the length of the body, it varies in shape from one individual to another.Some only have a barely perceptible lump but others may have prominent and falcate (sickle-shaped) dorsals. When surfacing to breathe, the blue whale raises its shoulder and blowhole out of the water to a greater extent than other large whales, such as the fin or sei whales. Some blue whales in the North Atlantic and North Pacific raise their tail fluke when diving.

The flippers are 3–4 metres (9.8–13 ft) long. The upper sides are grey with a thin white border; the lower sides are white. The head and tail fluke are generally uniformly grey. The whale's upper parts and sometimes the flippers are usually mottled. The degree of mottling varies substantially from individual to individual. Some may have a uniform slate grey color but others demonstrate a considerable variation of dark blues greys and blacks all tightly mottled.

Blue whales can reach speeds of 50 kilometres per hour . When feeding, they slow down to 5 kilometres per hour .

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