An adult blue whale can reach lengths in excess of 80 – 100 feet and weigh more than 150 tons when fully matured.
Even as an infant the blue whale can measure in at around 25 ft and gain as much as 200 pounds per day during its first year of birth.
Although blue whales are massive creatures they have a relatively slender body and a flat aerodynamically U-shaped head, which allows the whale to easily move through the water at high speeds.
In some cases blue whales can reach speeds of over 30 miles per hour for short bursts of time when they feel threatened or alarmed.
Surprisingly even though a blue whale is the largest animal in the world its diet consists primarily of krill, a small crustacean that generally measures between 1 – 2 centimeter, however there are a few species of krill which can reach lengths of up to 6 inches.
Blue whales may also coincidentally consume other types of crustaceans and small fish while hunting for krill.
During periods of foraging and hunting a blue whale may consume as many as 40 million krill per day.
Another interesting characteristic about blue whales is that when it comes to migrating a blue whale can forgo eating for up to four months living off of its stored blubber/body fat for energy.
Despite this marine mammals massive size however, it is unable to consume a human due to the fact that it has an extremely small throat, which is about the size of a beach ball.
Blue whales are also born with baleen plates instead of teeth, which it would need in order to grip larger prey and tear its flesh apart so that it could consume it.
In addition to the blue whales body it also possesses some of the largest body parts and organs of any known animal in existence.
When fully matured the blue whale has extremely large organs, veins & arteries.
In fact the blue whales largest veins & arteries are so big that a human could swim through them, its heart can weigh more than 1,300 pounds and its tongue can weigh more than 3 tons!
Part of the reason a blue whale is able to grow so large is because water provides buoyancy, minimizes stress on the whales organs due to the fact that it weighs less in water & because the ocean offers the blue whale a large nearly limitless supply of food.
Given the blue whales massive size it would be nearly impossible for an animal as large as a blue whale to live on land today because its large body would prevent it from being able to easily maneuver in most environments and because it would be extremely difficult for an animal that large to find the amount of food it would need to survive on a daily basis.
It would also require an animal as large as a blue whale to develop extremely strong limb muscles and a supportive bone structure to hold all of its organs in place, so until evolution decides to create a large and more abundant food supply on land and animals that are designed to be that large its unlikely we’ll see any whale size animals living on land.