#whale

#whale

A Blue Whale Eats Between 10 to 20 Tons of Food a Day or About 20 to 50 Million Calories. That's the Equivalent of 80,000 Big Macs!Baleen whales swallow much more food than was initially thought according to a recent study of filter-feeding whales that shows the importance of their eating habits in nutrient recycling in the ocean. The study shows that the different Baleen whales such as blue, fin, minke, and humpback whales consume at an average of around three times more each year than previous estimates. For instance, a blue whale in the eastern North Pacific can eat between 10 and 20 tons of food each day.”That amount of food is somewhere in the range of 20 to 50 million calories. That is about 70- to 80-thousand Big Macs. Probably decades of our eating is one day for them. So it's pretty remarkable," said Matthew Savoca, a researcher at Stanford University and the lead author of the new study.He added that the only data he could find about how much whales eat "didn't actually come from living, breathing whales in the wild." Researchers had only made extrapolations from the caloric needs of smaller animals or from the stomach contents of hunted whales.To get more accurate estimates, an underwater device was used that can measure the size and density of swarms of shrimp like krill. Krill are the main diet of whales, and the device can measure their number by sending out pulses of sound that bounce off the krill swarms and return. The gathered data of Savoca and colleagues came from more than 300 tagged whales.Image: Duke University Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab#whale #food #krill #BigMacs

Warning: Do NOT Ride the WhalesYou would think that it would not be necessary to tell people this. But, to be fair, the problem that the museum faced is that people were climbing on the life-size models of the whales for, presumably, photo opportunities.Rosemary Marco, a naturalist and the artist behind the nature-themed webcomic Bird and Moon, shares this photo. She says that it’s from a whale museum in Quebec. I’m going to guess that it’s the Marine Mammal Interpretation Centre in the town of Tadoussac. Online photos of it show a wide variety of model whale skeletons online. Only such a sign could keep tourists off them.#whale #sign

Stained Glass Whale LampJudy Yuu, a stained glass artist, makes beautiful works using irregularly shaped pieces. Together, they form vividly compelling shapes, often as animals that appear to be in motion. I'm especially taken with her lamps shaped like whales, swans, and sea turtles.-via So Super Awesome#whale #stainedglass #JudyYuu #lamp

This is a Whale, as Drawn by 18th Century Artists Who've Never Actually Seen OneAntonio Mongitore was a Sicilian cleric, historian and writer who loved all things Sicilian. So when he heard about the existence of "monstri marini" (sea monsters) swimming in the coast of the island of Sicily in early 17 century, he set out to document the creature.But how do you describe a gigantic creature of the sea that are whales? With these fantastic illustrations, of course!Image: Sperm whale illustration in manuscript by Antonio Mongitore (1663-1743) General Research Division/New York Public Library - via USGS