How Big is Big: The Blue Whale

The The Blue Whale (balaenoptera musculus) is generally considered the largest animal that ever lived. It can reach lengths of over 110 feet long and weights of over 200 tons.

It's hard to imagine what that is in real terms. 110 feet is over 1/3 the length of a football field. To give an even better conception of how big that is, I've included a photograph of the life-size blue whale model from the American Museum of Natural History in New York.


The Blue Whale is a carnivore. He hunts large shoals of tiny shrimp called krill. The whale will swim through the krill with his cavernous mouth open taking in as much water and krill as he can, then he closes his mouth and uses his tongue to push the water back out letting his feather-like teeth called baleen strain out the shrimp which he then swallows.

The throat of the Blue whale is pleated so it can expand like an accordion when he takes in water. The image above shows his throat about half expanded. For a long time, scientists thought the whales throat was always partially expanded because they only time anyone go to see the underside of the whale was when one beached itself or was harvested by whalers.

Compare the images below of a free swimming blue whale with his throat deflated and another image of the whale with his throat full of water and krill.

The Michael Jackson Rule

When it comes to Frank Melton and his summer jobs program for teens, I'm afraid it's time to invoke the Michael Jackson Rule.

The Michael Jackson Rule is this: Michael might be innocent of all the terrible things people say about him, but a prudent person won't let their children anywhere near him, just in case.

I don't know what's the deal with Frank Melton and teenage boys. Some people say he's running his own private, Boys Town. Some people say he's more like Oliver Twist's Fagin or worse.

It's disturbing when the police go looking for someone in connection with violent crime and we find out they are or were living at the Mayor's house and it's even more disturbing when he takes them out for a night of vigilante crack house demolition.

Melton might be on the Up and Up, I hope he is, but this summer jobs program is completely under planned and under funded and pushing it through by raising a mob of kids and parents looking for a summer paycheck is just irresponsible enough to make a reasonable parent think twice about wanting to have anything to do with it.