Are you nosy enough to know what do whales eat? Here are the facts that relates to the whales’ diet. Whales are by far the largest living mammal on the planet earth. Scientists aren’t exactly sure about the weight of this mammoth animal since it’s too difficult to devise any appropriate weighing device that could support this mammal. However, an estimate about its weight is 180 tonnes (180 long tonnes; 200 short tonnes), with the length (equal to the two city buses) measures at 30 metres (98 feet). Now let’s come to the whales diet.
What Do Whales Eat?
These largest mammals employ several hunting techniques to seize their prey. Not every whales specie exhibit the same diet pattern in that baleen whales have different nutrients requirements whereas toothed whales have different.
The overall diet consists of shrimp, fish, plankton, crabs, krill, larvae, sea lions, walruses, sharks, seals, birds and other smaller whales. One of the most common methods of hunting whales exercise is echo-location. It so happens that whales send out some sonic waves or busy noises that bounce off of the fish or any other nearby object thereby indicating the exact position. It also tells the whale whether the object is in motion or stable. They may not stop producing sounds unless they find their prey.
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- Baleen whales are known to utilize a hunting method, filter feeding in which they tend to swim around while opening their mouths and filter food through their baleen plates. Gray whales will eat steadily from bottom of the ocean to top. Whales are opportunistic feeders in that they consume about 3,000 pounds of food each day. However, few scientists suggest that gray whales utilize 4,500 pounds of food every day.
- Humpback whales have a distinctive hunting method of bubble netting (or lung netting). Baleen and humpback whales usually feed at higher elevations and for the same reason they are mostly found in the Southern Ocean. These animals also guzzle large quantity of sea water which is expelled through their baleen plates. During the process, the krill is kept on the plates and is swallowed later. Orca whales are contemplated at the top of food chain in the aquatic life and have no real predators.
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