What is the largest animal in the ocean?

The blue whale is as long as a basketball court and can weigh as much as 57 minivans. As far as we know, it is the largest animal ever to live. (Even the biggest dinosaurs were probably not as large.) A blue whale’s tongue alone weighs more than two Volkswagen Beetles.

Blue whales get their name from their blue-grey skin. They are found in all of the world’s oceans, but are quite rare. Blue whales were hunted up until 1966, when they were finally protected.

Blue whales may be large, but they eat some of the smaller animals in the sea. They strain tiny shrimp-like animals, called krill, from the ocean. And they eat a lot. Blue whales eat up to 3.6 tonnes of krill a day. That’s about 4 million krill! Blue whale babies are hungry, too. They drink about 600 litres of their mothers’ milk every day. The milk is so rich in fat they can gain 90 kilograms a day. (That’s as much as one man might weigh!