text: 10 Facts about The Largest Animal to Ever Exist — The Blue Whale | by Alasdair Lea | Medium
  10 Facts about The Largest Animal to Ever Exist — The Blue Whale
  These 10 jaw-dropping facts show just what massive proportions it has.
  Whales are amazing creatures which inspire awe, fear and respect due to their sheer size. As marine creatures that reside in either the depths or the poles, humans knew very little about whales over the course of history; many feared or revered them.
  In Old English the word Whale means 'giant sea fish' yet, interestingly, they are not fish at all, but mammals. Like us, they breathe air, are social, feed their babies with their own milk, take extraordinarily good care of their young and teach them life skills.
  The giant among giants is a type of baleen whale named the Blue Whale, a gentle creature that grows larger than any of the massive dinosaurs or beasts that once roamed on land or swam in the oceans. Here I have 10 jaw-dropping facts about this animal that show just what massive proportions it has.
  Man and ocean giant (dailymail.co.uk)
  An adult Blue Whale can grow to a massive 30m (98 feet) long. Stood up it would be almost the height of the Tower of London. It can weigh more than 190,000kg (418,878lbs) - about the same as 40 elephants, 30 Tyrannosaurus Rex or 2,670 average-sized men.
  Blue Whale heart (reddit.com)
  Oxygen is pumped around its enormous body by an equally massive, four-chambered heart. Weighing some 900kg (1,984lbs) - and the size of a Mini car - the Blue Whale's heart beats once every 10 seconds, pumping 220 litres (48 gallons) of blood through its body.
  Blue Whale's expanded throat (nwf.org)
  A Blue Whale's tiny eyes are mere grapefruit sized (bbcearth.com)
  Blue Whales have relatively small eyes for their body size - each about the size of a grapefruit - and their eyesight is thought to be weak.
  Despite having no external ears, Blue Whales are believed to have excellent hearing, using air sinuses and bones to detect sound. They communicate using low-frequency whistles or rumbling noises which can travel hundreds of kilometres away and reach 188 decibels - louder than a passenger jet.
  The once thriving whaling industry (nhm.ac.uk)
  It is thought that there were once more than 250,000 Blue Whales. Now it is estimated there are between 10,000 and 25,000 left in the world.