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Blue whale
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Blue whale
Adult blue whale from the eastern Pacific Ocean
Size compared to an average human
Conservation status
Endangered (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Mammalia |- valign=top
(Unranked)
Cetacea |- valign=top
(Unranked)
Mysticeti
Family:
Balaenopteridae
Genus:
Balaenoptera
Species:
B. musculus
Binomial name
Balaenoptera musculus
(Linnaeus, 1758)
Subspecies
B. m. brevicauda Ichihara, 1966* ?B. m. indica Blyth, 1859* B. m. intermedia Burmeister, 1871* B. m. musculus Linnaeus, 1758
Blue whale range (in blue)
Synonyms
Balaenoptera gibbar Scoresby, 1820* Pterobalaena gigas Van Beneden, 1861* Physalus latirostris Flower, 1864* Sibbaldius borealis Gray, 1866* Flowerius gigas Lilljeborg, 1867* Sibbaldius sulfureus Cope, 1869* Balaenoptera sibbaldii Sars, 1875
The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal belonging to the baleen whales (Mysticeti). At 30 metres (98 ft) in length and 170 tonnes (190 short tons) or more in weight, it is the largest known animal ever to have existed.Long and slender, the blue whale's body can be various shades of bluish-grey dorsally and somewhat lighter underneath. There are at least three distinct subspecies: B. m. musculus of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia of the Southern Ocean and B. m. brevicauda (also known as the pygmy blue whale) found in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean. B. m. indica, found in the Indian Ocean, may be another subspecies. As with other baleen whales, its diet consists almost exclusively of small crustaceans known as krill.Blue whales were abundant in nearly all the oceans on Earth until the beginning of the twentieth century. For over a century, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers until protected by the international community in 1966. A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 blue whales worldwide, located in at least five groups. More recent research into the Pygmy subspecies suggests this may be an underestimate. Before whaling, the largest population was in the Antarctic, numbering approximately 239,000 (range 202,000 to 311,000). There remain only much smaller (around 2,000) concentrations in each of the eastern North Pacific, Antarctic, and Indian Ocean groups. There are two more groups in the North Atlantic, and at least two in the Southern Hemisphere.
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