April 11, 2012

Blue Whale Facts



We have been studying whales. Chewonki came and they brought a pilot whale skeleton. We put it together. It was interesting and fun, and we really enjoyed it. Thank you to  our PTA for getting the program for us!

We are going to tell you facts about blue whales. The pictures we picked are blue whales. Blue whales are hard to photograph. We found lots of humpback whale pictures that were labeled wrongly as blue whales!

Our Facts:

Blue whales can be 100 feet long. They are the biggest animal that ever lived! They are bigger than the biggest dinosaur.

A baby blue whale is about as long as 5 bathtubs.

Their flippers are only 5 feet long.

A baby blue whale is called a calf. It can gain 200 pounds a day. They drink mom's milk. The mother squirts the milk into her baby's mouth. The baby plays on mom's flipper. The baby stays with mom for a year. 

Blue whales have baleen. They don't have teeth. They swim to Antarctica to eat krill. Krill are like small shrimp, and they are about the size of your little finger. They eat thousands of pounds of krill in a day! Blue whales eat by gulping water and their baleen traps the krill. Their mouth gets so humungous that our whole first grade could swim in it! Throat pleats let their mouth get so big. 

Blue whales swim alone. They do not swim in pods.

Like all baleen whales, blue whales have two blowholes.

We want to keep the oceans clean, so the beautiful creatures like blue whales don't die.