By: David P. Everson

When God came to day five of the creation of all things, He designed an animal of unbelievable proportions. The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is bigger than even the biggest dinosaurs. This is hard to believe given how big the Brachiosaur is, as big as a house, but the Blue Whale is even bigger!

Living for somewhere near 110 years or more, this mammal can weigh in at more than 70 mid-size cars at 150 tons when fully grown with the females being the largest. The heart alone will be as large as a car by itself. The tail of this behemoth can be as wide as the wingspan of a small two seat airplane. Its eye is the size of a standard basketball. This massive animal is indeed a testimony to the creative design capability of God.

They will reach these gigantic sizes feeding upon some of the smallest shrimp-like animals (krill) in the ocean environment. Krill is a very common microorganism found in all of the oceans of the world. The adult male blue whale can eat up to four tons of this crustacean, which would be about 40 million krill per day. That is like eating an elephant in a single day! They feed on these tiny life forms by straining the water with comb-like structures called baleen. The baleen sieve is made of keratin, which is the same material found in many other structures in nature like fingernails and animal hooves.

During feeding, large volumes of water and food can be taken into the mouth because the pleated grooves in the throat expand. As the mouth closes, water is expelled through the baleen plates, which trap the food on the inside near the tongue to be swallowed.

The blue whale is blue-gray in color, but often with lighter gray mottling on the darker background or with darker spots on the lighter background. The underside of its flippers may be a lighter color or white, while the ventral (underside) of the fluke is a dark color. The blue whale acquires microorganisms called diatoms in the cold waters of the Antarctic, North Pacific and North Atlantic, which give the underside of its body a yellowish green cast. Because of this yellow color, the early whalers gave it the name “sulfur bottom.”

The blue whale is found living in all of the oceans of the world. They may spend much of the spring and summer in polar waters where krill live in abundance. They can be found in tropical waters during autumn and winter. It is a member of the rorquals, the family of whales that include the humpback and fin whales, among others. For a high population of an estimated 200,000, and though the exact figures are not known, an estimated five thousand survive today in three populations scattered in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and the Southern Hemisphere.

The blue whale makes deep rumbling sounds that can be felt as much as heard. These low-frequency sounds travel long distances through water, allowing blue whales to communicate with each other over hundreds of miles of ocean.

Mothers, do you think your children were big at birth? The blue whale calves are 23 to 27 feet long at birth and weigh three tons. Calves nurse for seven to eight months and are weaned when they reach 52 feet in length. At that time, they weigh about twenty-three tons. During the nursing period, calves consume 100 gallons of the fat-rich mother’s milk each day, gain 200 pounds a day or eight pounds per hour and can grow one and a half inches in length a day.

So, when we contemplate the power and the majesty of God, let’s not forget those animals that man still knows very little about, such as the great blue whale. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20 NKJV). “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap;  He lays up the deep in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalms 33:6–9).

Author: David P. Everson