Disaster turns blue whale into the largest creature on the planet

The long ice age is the cause of turning blue whales into ocean "giants" with a weight of up to 140 tons.

Blue whales are the largest animal on Earth but they have only grown in size in the past few million years, the International Business Times reported on March 24.

How to divide horned whales, including water-filtering whales like blue whales, sperm whales and humpback whales, has long been a question in the evolutionary industry. Blue whales can reach a length of about 30m and weigh 140,000kg. To maintain massive bodies, they eat 40 million krill a day.

Blue whale is the largest animal on Earth.

The previous hypothesis is that when the whale ancestors moved from the sea to the sea about 50 million years ago, they began to grow after being released from the influence of gravity on land. But this hypothesis lacks strong evidence. Now, scientists can decipher the mystery and they discover the reason is because the ocean is colder. The study results were published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Analysis of 63 extinct whales shows that horned whales began to become giants about 4.5 million years ago during the long ice age. A few unrelated species began the process of evolution in a giant direction around that time independently of each other, proving to be the main environmental factor.

The cooler ocean affects nutrients on the edges of continents that cause zooplankton, horned whales' food sources, to gather into denser herds to take advantage of nutrient-rich spots. Larger whales can eat large dense zooplankton that are much more efficient than small whales. This is the motivation for their bodies to evolve into larger sizes. But this trait today may put horny whales at risk.

"Blue whales are animals that specialize in eating mollusks. If anything affects krill such as ocean acidification, blue whales will also be affected," said Nicholas Pyenson, the study's lead author. at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History said.