General Info CETACEAN TRIVIA Largest: The blue whale is up to 100 feet long and weighs 150 tons. Fastest: The finback whale can swim up to 30 MPH! Longest Baleen: The bowhead whale can have baleen 14 feet long.

Baleen whales are, on average, bigger than toothed whales. The blue whale is the most massive of the baleen whale group and is, in fact, the largest animal (that we know of) ever to have lived on Earth. The longest blue whale ever recorded was a female caught in Antarctica that measured 103 feet! An animal that size weighs up to 150 tons and has a heart the size of a compact car. Even the smallest species in the baleen group, the minke whale and pygmy right whale, can reach 20-25 feet in length and weigh almost 10 tons. Rorquals -Rorquals have anywhere from 15-70 throat grooves, or pleats, below their lower jaw. These pleats can be expanded like a pelicanÍs pouch to allow the whale to 'gulp' huge mouthfuls of water and food. Rorquals eat several kinds of prey, including small schooling fish, plankton, and krill. There are six rorqual species including blue, fin, sei (pronounced 'say'), Bryde's (pronounced 'brudas'), minke and humpback whales. Right Whales -Right whales are slow swimming, stocky whales that have enormous baleen plates, measuring up to 14 feet long! Right whales have no throat pleats. These whales have a large gap in the baleen, located in the front of their mouth, where water enters. The water then exits through the baleen plates on the side of the mouth and food is filtered out and trapped inside the mouth. Right whales almost exclusively eat calanoid copepods, a form of zooplankton. There are four species of right whales, including the Northern and Southern right whale, the pygmy right whale and the bowhead whale. Gray Whales- Gray whales measure about 40 feet long and have three to five throat pleats. Gray whales do not gulp food like rorquals, but rather feed by scraping up mud and sediment on the floor of the ocean. They feed on shellfish and other bottom-dwelling animals. There is only one species, the California gray whale.