The baleen whales are the largest animals ever to have lived. Meet five of them, and the elegant, improbable machinery that lets them survive on the smallest creatures in the sea.
Work through them in order, or start wherever your curiosity takes you.
Bigger than any dinosaur, yet powered by tiny krill. How does the blue whale survive as the ultimate giant of the oceans?
Humpback whales regularly breach their 30-ton bodies out of the water in spectacular aerial displays. Nobody yet knows exactly why they do it.
The name “right whale” came from whalers, who deemed it the “right” whale to hunt due to its characteristics of slow swimming, nearshore occurrence and its rich stores of oil and baleen. We are about to see it is so much more than this.
Gray whales love to breach and frequently do it on their long migrations. One gray whale even breached 40 times in a row! An impressive feat for a 36-ton whale!
Bowhead whales are perhaps the longest-living mammals in the world, with some whales having swum these oceans for 200 years. How they live this long remains a mystery.
Baleen arrived about 30 million years ago and has proven to be one of the most remarkable adaptations in mammals. It has created the largest animals to ever live on Earth.
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