What is the biggest animal?
The tallest animal on Earth is the giraffe, but just because the giraffe is tallest doesn't mean it's also the biggest!
The largest animal in the world is actually, by far, the blue whale. A full-grown blue whale usually measures between about 70 and 100 feet in length. By comparison, an American football field is 360 feet long blue whales are so big that it would only take about four of them to cover the entire length of a football field! In addition to its enormous length, blue whales are also big because they weigh so much. Most blue whales weigh about 90-150 tons, although some have even been bigger!
To fuel their enormous selves, blue whales eat krill, a small water creature sort of like shrimp. In one single day, an adult blue whale can eat over 7,000 pounds of krill! To eat the krill, blue whales take in giant gulps of water and then filter the water back out through their special tooth-like plates known as "baleen." Once the water has passed through the whale's baleen, all that's left is a mouthful of krill! Yum!
Exploration
Gentle Giants!
You might think that because a blue whale is so huge, it might not be very friendly, but in fact, this isn't true! Blue whales are extremely gentle creatures who actually have a lot in common with humans in fact, blue whales are mammals just like we are! Have you learned about any other ways that humans and blue whales are similar?