Hello, I'm blue whale

I’m one of the largest animals ever existed. Swimming with me, I will tell you more about my life and why I and my other whale friends are at risk of extinction.

I am sometimes also referred to as a Balaenoptera musculus which is my scientific name. But I like to be called Big Blue ( because I am the biggest known creature of earth hehe )

I can grow to over 30m long and weigh more than 130,000kg–that’s longer than three buses and heavier than three lorries! 

I has a broad flat head and a long tapered body that ends in wide, triangular flukes.

My heart has the size of a Volkswagen Beetle car and my tongue weights about as much of an elephant. Plus, my blood vessels are so wide a human could swim through them. 

I look truly blue underwater, but on the surface my coloring is more a mottled blue-gray. My underbellies take on a yellowish hue from the millions of microorganisms that take up residence in my skin. 

I am among Earth's longest-lived animals. Scientists have discovered that by counting the layers of a deceased whale's wax like earplugs, they can get a close estimate of the animal's age.

The oldest blue whale found using this method was determined to be around 110 years old. Average lifespan is estimated at around 80 to 90 years.

I reach the mind-boggling dimensions on a diet composed nearly exclusively of tiny shrimplike animals called krill. 

During certain times of the year, a single adult blue whale consumes about 4 tons of krill a day.

Me and my other friends live in all the world's oceans, except the Arctic, occasionally we swimming in small groups but usually alone or in pairs

We often spend summers feeding in polar waters and undertake lengthy migrations towards the Equator as winter arrives.

I'm swimmers cruise the ocean at more than five miles an hour, but accelerate to more than 20 miles an hour when I am agitated.

Me and my other friends also are among the loudest animals on the planet. We emit a series of pulses, groans, and moans, and it’s thought that, in good conditions, blue whales can hear each other up to 1,000 miles away.