Blue whales can eat half a million calories in a single mouthful. The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived. Ironically, it sustains its massive bulk by eating some of the smallest creatures in the ocean krill. A foraging whale lunges into a swarm of these shrimp like animals, accelerating to high speed with its mouth open at a right angle. Pushed back by the rush of water, its mouth expands and its tongue itself the size of an elephant inverts to create more room. The whale engulfs up to 1. Theres every reason to think that filtering out small prey is an incredibly efficient way of feeding. The largest fish, both living the whale shark and basking shark and extinct Leedsichthys, are all filter feeders. And the biggest of the whales the blue and fin both use this technique. But no one has ever put the reputed efficiency of filter feeding to the test, by calculating how much energy a blue whale spends on its lunges and how much it gets in return. Jeremy Goldbogen at the University of British Columbia is the first. Goldbogen tagged 2. California and Mexico, attaching recording devices to their backs when they surface. The data loggers recorded the whales position, their acceleration, and the noise and pressure of the surrounding water. The noise was important by measuring the sound of water rushing past the animal, Goldbergen could work out how fast it was travelling. In total, he managed to record over 6. The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived. Ironically, it sustains its massive bulk by eating some of the smallest creatures in the ocean. Latest environmental news, features and updates. Pictures, video and more. Is and in to a was not you i of it the be he his but for are this that by on at they with which she or from had we will have an what been one if would who has her. Aphid Transmission Of Plant Viruses Gray' title='Aphid Transmission Of Plant Viruses Gray' />Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. Genus Anoecia. Mediumsized aphids which may be winged or wingless. Wingless adults shown here are greenishgray or gray with a dark sclerotic dorsal abdominal plate. Get your weekly DIY fix with our customized newsletter. Thanks Youve been added to our list. Good stuff is on its way PLOS Biology provides an Open Access platform to showcase your best research and commentary across all areas of biological science. Submit Now System Help. The Energy Biosciences Institute EBI, a partnership institution at the University of California at Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the University of. We interrupt your regularly scheduled news programming to bring you this wonderful piece of trivia about kangaroo genitals. Regular readers will know of my. Melon aphid occurs in tropical and temperate regions throughout the world except northernmost areas. In the United States, it is regularly a pest in the southeast and. On each one, the whale accelerates to a top speed of 8 miles per hour in less than a minute. If that seems low, bear in mind that this is an animal that weighs 1. Michael Phelps swam the 1. Every attempt costs a huge amount of energy, around 7. Worse still, the water that rushes into the whales mouth produces so much drag that it grinds to a virtual halt. Samsung Note N8000 Software Update on this page. To lunge again, the whale needs to build up speed from a standstill, and it will do so around three or four times on a single ten minute dive. Nonetheless, when Goldbogen plugged the data from his recorders into a simulation of a feeding whale, he found that the lunge is staggeringly efficient. Despite the massive outlay in energy, the whale easily recoups anywhere from 6 to 2. If a big whale attacks a particularly dense swarm, it can swallow up to 5. A smaller whale lunging at a sparse collection of krill would only get around 8,0. Even when Goldbogen accounted for the energy needed to dive in search of prey, the whales still regained 3 to 9. For comparison, sea otters get around 4 calories for every one they burn, and Weddell seals get around 1. If blue whales happen across a particularly thick glut of prey, their feeding efficiency is about ten times greater than for any other sea going mammal. All of these record breaking numbers are probably a pale shadow of the true efficiency of a hunting whale, because he was being fairly conservative about the krill in his simulations. Photographs of krill suggest that these animals can gather in swarms a hundred or even a thousand times greater than those that Goldbogen used. If a whale swam into one of these swarms with mouth agape, it might even recover 1. An efficient lifestyle is a big boon to the blue whale. Every year, it migrates from rich feeding areas close to the pole to relatively poorer mating areas towards the equator. If its to survive, it needs to feed as effectively as it can during the summer to build up a thick layer of blubbery reserves to fuel it through the harsh food starved winter. Reference Journal of Experimental Biology http dx. Update For more on Goldbogens work, you have to read this great post by Carl Zimmer, where he explains why giant whales are a bit like parachutes. More on whales If the citation link isnt working, read why here.