page_title: Blue whale
section_title: Size
hierarchical_section_title: Blue whale / Morphology / Size
caption_attribution_description: English: A 19 Foot Long Blue Whale Skull at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
context_page_description: The blue whale is a marine mammal belonging to the baleen whale suborder Mysticeti. Reaching a maximum confirmed length of 29.9 meters and weight of 173 tonnes, it is the largest animal known to have ever existed. The blue whale’s long and slender body can be various shades of grayish-blue dorsally and somewhat lighter underneath.
  There are currently five subspecies of blue whale, recognized by the Society for Marine Mammalogy’s Committee on Taxonomy: B. m. musculus in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia in the Southern Ocean, B. m. brevicauda in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, B. m. indica in the Northern Indian Ocean, and B. m. unnamed subsp. in the waters off Chile. The blue whale diet consists almost exclusively of euphausiids.
  The blue whale was once abundant in nearly all the oceans on Earth until the end of the 19th century. It was hunted almost to the point of extinction by whaling until the International Whaling Commission banned all hunting of blue whales in 1967. The International Whaling Commission catch database estimates that 382,595 blue whales were caught between 1868 and 1978.
context_section_description: The blue whale is the largest known animal. In the International Whaling Commission (IWC) whaling database, 88 individuals longer than 30 m were reported, including one up to 33.0 m, but problems with how the measurements were made suggest that measurements longer than 30.5 m are somewhat suspect. The Discovery Committee reported lengths up to 102 ft (31.1 m); however, the longest scientifically measured (e.g., from rostrum tip to tail notch) individual blue whale was 98 ft (29.9 m). Female blue whales are larger than males. Hydrodynamic models suggest that a blue whale could not exceed 108 ft (33 m) due to metabolic and energy constraints.
  The average length of sexually mature female blue whales is 72.1 ft (22.1 m) for Eastern North Pacific blue whales, 79 ft (24.1 m) for central and western North Pacific blue whales, 92 ft (28.1 m) for North Atlantic blue whales, 83.4–86.3 ft (25.4–26.6 m) for Antarctic blue whales, 77.1 ft (23.5 m) for Chilean blue whales, and 69.9 ft (21.3 m) for pygmy blue whales.
  In the Northern Hemisphere, males weigh an average 100 tons (200,000 lb) and females 112 tons (224,000 lb). Eastern North Pacific blue whale males average 88.5 tons (177,000 lb) and females 100 tons (200,000 lb). Antarctic males averaged 112 tons (224,000 lb) and females 130 tons (260,000 lb). Pygmy blue whale males average 83.5 (167,000 lb) and 99 tons (198,000 lb). The largest heart weight measured from a stranded North Atlantic blue whale was 0.1985 tons (397 lb), the largest known in any animal.
caption: A blue whale skull measuring 5.8 meters (19 ft)
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