Behemoths
Blue whales are the largest animals that have ever lived on earth. Whaling records from the early 20th century document blue whales as
long as 33 m (108 feet). Females are, on average, 3 m (10 feet) longer than males. Animals this size are difficult to imagine. To put it in
perspective, they are longer than two Vancouver trolley buses parked one behind the other (each is 40 ft long). Their hearts are the size of a car
and the arteries connected to the car-sized heart are large enough that a human baby could crawl through them.
The blue whale's scientific name is Balaenoptera musculus. The genus name Balaenoptera means 'winged whale', and the specific
epithet, musculus, can be translated from the Latin as either 'muscular' or 'mouse', which was probably a little joke on the part of
Linnaeus, who named the whale.
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