What kind of food does the largest animal "blue whale" eat? How long do you usually live? Do you have any natural enemies? Will it be eaten by orcas?

The blue whale is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder baleen. There are four subspecies. The blue whale is considered to be the largest known animal on Earth, measuring up to 33 meters long and weighing 181 tons. So what kind of food do blue whales eat? How long do you usually live? Do you have any natural enemies? Will it be eaten by orcas?

What kind of food do blue whales eat?

Like other baleen whales, blue whales mainly feed on small crustaceans (such as krill) and small fish, sometimes including squid. Krill is the most numerous animal in the world and is widely distributed in the north and south polar seas. It is precisely because of such abundant food, and there is no weight limit for living in the water, so the blue whale can grow so large. The stomach of a blue whale is divided into four. The first stomach is swollen by part of the esophagus, so it has a great appetite. It can swallow about 2 million krill at a time. It eats 4000-8000kg of krill every day. If the food in its stomach is less than 2000 kg, it will feel hungry.

How long can the blue whale live?

Life expectancy is generally over 50 years old, and can live up to 90 Mel 100 years old.

Blue whales breed in winter. Females usually give birth every two years, with a pregnancy period of 10 cents and 12 months, each giving birth to only one calf. This kind of "sea monster" gives birth to an astonishingly large cub, which is 6mur8 meters long and weighs about 6000 kilograms at birth. In order to prevent suffocation, the female has to lift the cub out of the water to take the first breath of air, and then it can breathe on its own. Blue whale milk is very rich in nutrition, in which the content of fat is 10 times that of milk, while the calf eats more than 1000 kilograms of milk every day, so it grows very fast. After 8 months, it can increase to 15 meters, and its weight can grow to 23000 kilograms. You can open your mouth to eat all kinds of plankton. At the age of two and a half to three years old, the body length can exceed 20 meters. The age of sexual maturity is about 8-10.

Will blue whales be eaten by orcas?

According to one statistic, 25% of blue whales have been bitten by orcas when they were young. Sub-adult blue whales may also be hunted by orcas. But only if the population of orcas is large, say 20 to 30 orcas, to prey on an underage blue whale. Adult blue whales have no natural enemies except whaling ships and large ships in the human sea. So LZ if blue whales will be eaten by orcas, the answer is yes. But it is a bit far-fetched to say that orcas are the natural enemies of blue whales. Just as orcas are tigers in the sea and blue whales are elephants in the sea. In extreme cases, tigers may also go back to eat young elephants that prey on their mothers and sub-adult elephants that live alone. But it cannot be said that the tiger is the natural enemy of the elephant. So orcas do hunt underage blue whales in extreme cases, but orcas cannot be the natural enemies of blue whales.