Can blue whales get sick and do blue whales have natural predators in the world?

Blue whales have no natural predators in the world. Even if it's not the apex predator in the ocean.

But its sheer size is a natural protection in itself, so blue whales don't really have predators in the ocean, but there is still a species that can threaten their survival.

It is a serious threat to the blue whale, the largest animal in the world, with a body length of more than 30 meters and a weight of more than 30 tons.

Blue whales are the main food

Mainly small crustaceans.

For example, krill feeds on small fish, and sometimes eats squid, the stomach of the blue whale is divided into four, and the first stomach is the expansion of the esophagus, so the appetite is huge, and it can swallow about 2 million krill at a time, and it has to eat 4,000 to 8,000 kilograms a day, and if the food in the belly is less than 2,000 kilograms, there will be a feeling of hunger. Krill is the main food for blue whales, and krill is the most abundant animal in the world, widely distributed in the Antarctic and Antarctic seas.

Another ocean overlord, the megalodon.

Killer whale.

Killer whales, also known as orcas, belong to a type of dolphin, which can reach up to 10 meters in length, and even sharks are a meal on the plate of killer whales, which are well-deserved overlords in the ocean.

Killer whales are well-deserved overlords of the ocean, in addition to their powerful strength, high-IQ group combat ability can kill all kinds of large underwater creatures, and the blue whale without an adult will sometimes become its target, but the adult blue whale will hardly provoke, after all, the size of hundreds of tons is not a decoration, and any swing of the tail can make you lose the ability to fight. Killer whales have very high IQs, live in groups, have a clear division of labor when hunting, are good at using strategy, have complex ways of communicating between races, and have their own unique "language".

Blue whales have no natural predators.

Of course, it is not denied that killer whales are the animals at the top of the food chain in the ocean, and their ecological niche is even higher than that of great white sharks. And in a survey data, it is shown that on average about 1 5 blue whales will be attacked by killer whales before they reach adulthood, which can be seen from the tooth marks on many juvenile blue whales.

However, even if a juvenile blue whale is attacked by a pod of killer whales, the mortality rate of the blue whale is extremely low. This is because blue whales live with their mothers, adult females, and adult females are protective of their young. Secondly, the growth rate of blue whales is very fast, from birth to the eighth month, the weight of blue whales can increase from more than 2 tons at the beginning to more than 20 tons.

Therefore, with the extremely fast growth rate and the protection of adult blue whales, killer whale groups will return empty-handed even if they attack blue whales, so killer whales are not natural predators of blue whales.

Barnacles are considered natural predators of blue whales, which is actually a fallacy

Barnacles feed mainly on plankton in the ocean, and krill, the blue whale's favorite food, also feeds on plankton, so a large number of barnacles choose to "make their home" on the blue whale. This is also the main reason why many people believe that barnacles are natural predators of blue whales.

In fact, barnacles and blue whales are parasitic and parasitized. However, barnacles only cling to the body surface of blue whales, and their nutrition** is still plankton, and they do not absorb the nutrients from blue whales. And the small size of the barnacle attached to the blue whale does not affect the swimming speed of the blue whale.

Therefore, barnacles are not strictly predators of blue whales.

Eat, the blue whale eats people like fish, it's all meat.

Blue whales don't eat people.

Blue whales feed mainly on small crustaceans (e.g. krill) and small fish, sometimes squid.

Krill is the main food of blue whales, and the plankton they eat varies from one area to another. Blue whales typically prey on the densest krill schools it can find, meaning that they need to forage in deep water (over 100 meters) during the day and only reach the surface at night. The dive time for blue whales during foraging is generally 10 minutes.

During the predation process, the blue whale swallows large schools of krill at a time, and at the same time swallows a large amount of seawater. The abdomen and tongue are then squeezed to squeeze the water through the baleen plate. When the water is drained from the mouth, the blue whale swallows the remaining krill, which cannot pass through the baleen plate.

Life expectancy is generally over 50 years old, and can live up to 90-100 years old.

Blue whales breed in winter, and females generally give birth once every 2 years, with a gestation period of 10-12 months, and only 1 litter per litter. This kind of "sea monster", the cub produced is also amazingly large, the body length is 6-8 meters when born, the weight is about 6000 kilograms, in order to prevent suffocation, the female beast has to lift the cub out of the water to breathe the first breath of air, and then it can breathe on its own. The nutrients in the blue whale milk are very rich, the fat content is 10 times that of cow's milk, and the pups smoke more than 1,000 kilograms of milk every day, so they develop quickly, after 8 months, they can increase to 15 meters, and their weight grows to 23,000 kilograms, and they can open their mouths to eat all kinds of plankton.

By the age of 2 1/2 to 3 years, the body length can exceed 20 meters. The age of sexual maturity is about 8 to 10 years old

Blue whales begin mating after autumn and continue until late winter. We don't know anything about mating behavior and breeding sites. Females give birth once every 2 to 3 years, and after a gestation period of 10 to 12 months, they usually give birth in early winter.

The juvenile whale weighs about 2 and a half tons and is about 7 meters long. The calves are weaned after about 6 months, by which time the calves have doubled in length. Blue whales are generally sexually mature at the age of 8 to 10 years, when males are at least 20 meters long (longer in the Southern Hemisphere).

Females are comparatively larger, sexually mature at about 5 years of age, and are about 21 meters long at this time.

Scientists estimate that blue whales live to be at least 80 years old; However, since individual records cannot be traced back to the age of whaling, it will take many years to determine the exact lifespan of whales. The longest recorded study of a single individual is 34 years in the Northeast Pacific (Sears 1998 report). The natural predator of the blue whale is the orcas.

Calambokidis et al. (1990) found that 25 adult blue whales had scars from orca attacks. However, there are no exact figures on the death toll from the attacks.