After the extinction of the dinosaurs on the Earth, there are not so many animals that could compete with them in size. On land, there are none at all, but in the seas, whales claim this title.
By the way, why are they so big? What do whales eat that grow up to? We think that if you did not sleep in biology classes, then you yourself can perfectly answer this question. However, nothing prevents a little refresh your knowledge in this area.
Oddly enough, but these giants do not eat the kind of food that you would think about, looking at the size of their body and monstrous mouth. They practically do not eat fish, if you do not take into account the trifle that comes across to them by chance. So what do whales eat?
The importance of krill in the diet of marine giants
If you, again, are at least a little versed in school biology, you may know that phyto- and zooplankton make up the bulk of ocean biomass. This is a mixture of the smallest organisms, which are in no way comparable to the dimensions of the whales themselves. As a rule, these are small crustaceans and unicellular algae, the calorific value of which is very small.
Having understood what the whales eat, it is necessary to talk about the mechanism of this process. At least once, but everyone has heard of such a thing as a whalebone. What kind of mustache are these? After all, no one had ever seen a magnificent mustache growing on the face of the same
blue whale , like that of some English gentleman!
What is a whalebone for?
The thing is that the so-called special plates in the digestive system of whales. Together they form a sort of giant sieve through which these hardworking mammals filter out billions of tons of seawater, collecting food for their huge body.
By the way, if in the crossword puzzle you see something like “what the whale eats, 5 letters”, then you can safely write the word “krill”, since it is he who designates the totality of those organisms that are the food of this marine animal.
But not all of these mammals give preference to some crustaceans! We are talking about sperm whales, the food of which is sometimes so great that it is dangerous even for the predator ...
What do sperm whales eat?
These aggressive foods are giant squids that live at depths greater than a kilometer. Some sources claim that sperm whales in search of their prey can dive to a depth of almost two kilometers, but authoritative experts still believe that the maximum depth of their dives does not exceed 1.2 km. Not always whale food is something very small.
What does the whale eat in infancy?
Now about what the cubs eat. If you carefully read our article, you could not help but notice the fact that we have repeatedly mentioned that whales belong to mammals. Simply put, the cubs of these animals are literally breast-fed, growing several tens of centimeters per day. This amazing fact is caused by the fact that whale milk is simply amazingly fat.
So we figured out what the whales eat and how it all happens. As you can see, nature is full of all sorts of amazing and peculiar things!