Why Are Marine Mammals So LARGE? A Marine Biologist EXPLAINS

#bluewhales #seaotters #kpassionate
Sea otters are the smallest marine mammal but still the world’s biggest weasel. And the largest marine mammal, the blue whale, is the biggest animal the planet has ever seen. Bigger than the biggest dinosaur. But why? Why are marine mammals so big?

00:00 - Sea Gigantism
01:01 - Is Gravity Why Marine Mammals Are So Large?
01:32 - Walrus Facts
02:05 - How Much Do Walruses Weigh
02:53 - Why Are Ocean Animals So Big?
03:36 - How Do Sea Otters Stay Warm?
04:51 - How Big Are Blue Whales?
05:18 - What Is Baleen?
06:27 - How Much Do Blue Whales Eat?
07:31 - Protecting Marine Mammals

For a long time, scientists thought gravity was the reason marine mammals evolved to be so massive. The thinking went that the buoyancy of water and the ability to float made it so these animals didn’t have to support their body weight on legs and bones.

However, a new study from Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences found that the truth is the exact opposite... It's not that living in the ocean allows you to be a big animal, but that you NEED to be a big animal in order to live in the ocean. Because the ocean is cold place and heat loss is 27 times faster in water than in air. The bigger you are the more heat you retain. But when you're small, you lose heat back into the water so fast that the only way to generate enough heat to stay warm… is to eat. A lot.

Sea otters are a great example since they’re the smallest marine mammal and the only one without a layer of blubber. Their metabolic rate at rest is about three times higher than that of similar sized land mammals. Every single day a sea otter will eat a quarter of their body weight. So a 40 pound sea otter will eat 10 pounds of clams, crabs, and mussels in one day.

Humans only need to eat about 2 percent of our body mass per day – so 3 pounds of food for a 155-pound person. Blue whales tip the scales at over 300,000 pounds… and if they needed to eat as much as a sea otter in order to stay warm… that would be 75,000 pounds of food in a day. There is simply no way for them to eat that much. So not only have they evolved into massive creatures that trap body heat.

Instead of teeth, baleen whales have plates of keratin from which they get their name. These baleen plates are essentially filters inside their mouths. When they feed, a baleen whale opens its mouth to take in water and then pushes the water out. Animals such as krill are filtered by the baleen and swallowed by the whale.

Because of their size, and efficient ways of feeding, blue whales only need to eat about 8,500 pounds of krill a day. Which is still the equivalent of a full grown male hippo and unfortunately also means that these whales are ingesting an enormous amount of pollutants. Which I talk about, in this video here. https://youtu.be/3b0jIWpneuY

Links & Sources
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/sea-mammals-are-huge-reason
[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/whales-size-animals-ocean-marine-mammals
[3] https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/animals/why-are-marine-mammals-like-whales-larger-than-land-mammals.html
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN1sUCxtsAw

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#marinebiologist #marinebiology #bluewhales #seaotter #seaotters #deepsea #deepseagiants #deepseacreatures #marinemammals