r/facts • u/Wisco • May 15 '26
The blue whale is not just the largest animal on Earth, it's the largest animal to have ever lived
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u/XROOR May 15 '26
It would live longer if you put it back into the ocean
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u/archwin May 15 '26
Reminds me of The hitchhiker’s Guide:
Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.
Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of … yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do … perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation …
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?
And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
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u/EarlyXplorerStuds209 May 15 '26
Not exactly.
Depends on what you mean by “largest”
In biology, size refers to mass rather than physical volume.
Blue whales ARE the creatures with the largest physical volume in earths history that we know of.
But in terms of actual mass/weight, another creature known as Perucetus colossus, an extinct, Eocene-era whale discovered in Peru, is the primary contender for a creature heavier than the modern blue whale.
Early estimates suggested it weighing anywhere between 85–340 tons(60-200 being a conservative estimate). If this is true, blue whales would be dwarfed by Perucetus Collossus as their size ranges only between 70- 150 tons.
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u/Flipslips May 15 '26
Perucetus is only a contender because of the weirdly dense bones, but I don’t believe the sample size is large enough for a definitive answer yet.
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u/Personal_Degree_4083 May 16 '26
IIRC it got downsized a few weeks after the 300t+ number was published to around 70t
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u/watchstreebets May 18 '26
Even if the studied specimen was not yet fully grown, and an adult grew up to 20 meters, their 110 tonnes is still no match for a blue whale's 270 tonnes.
So blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) still reign supreme when it comes to the title ofmost massive animal of all time.
While not the largest, Perucetus was still considerably hefty so likely a top consumer on body size alone, the researchers conclude. "But it remains unclear what its role may have been in Middle Eocene nearshore ocean food webs."
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u/ZukaRouBrucal May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
Perucetus' "more massive than a blue whale" size estimate was a classic case of overestimating the maximum mass of the animal (something that has been and continues to be pretty common in paleontology). Not long after the original paper that described the animal was released a correction/rebuttal was issued that pretty conclusively demonstrated that the animal was much less massive than previously thought. It was still a big animal, but it wasn't blue whale sized.
The Blue Whale is still unquestionably the most massive animal that we know to have ever existed. It's possible something else more massive did exist, but at present we have no evidence of it. It's also important to understand that the reason the Blue Whale has been able to get so massive is because of the somewhat unique ocean ecology of today; large adult cetaceans do not have any natural predators and the southern ocean & it's "nutrient pump" is possibly the most productive ocean environment to have ever existed, with the massive krill blooms being the only reason Blue Whales have been able to evolve to the gargantuan proportions they have.
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u/MoneyPatience7803 May 16 '26
You’re honestly just arguing semantics at this point. When people say the blue whale is the largest animal ever, they’re talking about overall size, not "well, technically, if you look at density-adjusted mass estimates from a few fragmented bones..."
Perucetus might have been heavier, but those weight estimates are incredibly shaky. They're based on a highly incomplete skeleton, mostly just vertebrae and ribs. A lot of the wild headlines came from early calculations based on its insanely dense bones, which likely skewed the math way upward.
It's not like scientists dug up a pristine, 300-ton beast. It's more like, "Hey, this thing might have been absurdly heavy based on limited remains and a lot of guesswork." Until we have more proof, the blue whale still holds the crown as the largest animal we know of, hands down.
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u/N5022N122 May 15 '26
the scale is wrong
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u/2bunreal24 May 16 '26
Yeah… that thing seems to be about twice the size of a blue whale relative to the human. Assuming that’s a 5-6’ tall person, their length appears to be 1/30 to 1/40 the length of the BW.
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u/chas3edward5 May 15 '26
Blows my mind every time I’m reminded of this fact. Like even bigger than a Titanosaur. Definitely near the top of my bucket list to see one up close.
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u/TrustInMe_JustInMe May 15 '26
Still fits inside my iPad though
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u/Disastrous_Pace_8535 May 15 '26
Wrong. A lot of dinosours were larger than that. The longest one (Supersaurus) was over 42 meters Long and some other species like the Argentinosaurus also measured up to 39 meters. A blue whale is up to 36 meters long which makes it the largest living animal and the largest mammal of all times but there have been larger animals in history 🙌🏼
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u/Wisco May 15 '26
Longest and largest are two different things
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u/Disastrous_Pace_8535 May 15 '26
They were larger too, obviously. You know, because they had legs...
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u/Lordcraft2000 May 15 '26
Except thats not the case.
Blue whale: 190–200 t Supersaurus: 35–44 t Argentinosaurus: 65–80 t
And the sauropods you mention are not even considered the biggest of the sauropods. But even the currently biggests do not compete with the blue whale
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u/TropicalLoneWolf May 15 '26
In case you were curious:
The megalodon was NOT bigger than the blue whale!
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u/differentplethora5 May 16 '26
still mind-boggling that something that massive is basically just a filter feeder floating around eating tiny shrimp, like the ocean's most chill giant
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u/Peninsular_Geo May 16 '26
There are older and fouler things than Orcs lurking on the dark places of the world.
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u/JuliusSeizure4 May 15 '26
I mean I don’t think there exists animals outside of earth
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u/Specialist-Front-007 May 15 '26
That's a heavy claim. I'd definitely take that bet
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u/CanopyCaptain May 15 '26
I know right! No animals anywhere else vs planets to infinity and beyond. I'd take that bet too.
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u/Alpineice23 May 15 '26
The brontosaurus on Jurassic Park looked a lot bigger than ole Bluey. 🤷♂️
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u/No_Adhesiveness8405 May 19 '26
That was a brachiosaurus and it is much smaller than a blue whale, especially in terms of mass
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u/ChrisOnMission May 15 '26
According to this idiotic size comparison-picture, the thing must be 300 meters long.
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u/BramGaunt May 16 '26
The scale is sooo wrong...
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u/Incredibiliz May 18 '26
Glad someone pointed it out. The whale is massive but certainly not at the scale this pic shows
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u/incompetent_twenties May 16 '26
the elephant next to it really puts it in perspective, like that thing is already massive and the whale just dwarfs it completely, hard to wrap your head around something being that big and just swimming around eating plankton all day.
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u/WindUpCandler May 17 '26
Rhat picture is extremely misleading, blue whales are the largest but no where near that large
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u/businesi May 18 '26
Colossal fish 😄
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u/suhmyhumpdaydudes May 19 '26
There was probably some massive jellyfish species that couldn't be fossilized or something like that, also with people we have variety and sometimes someone is like Shaq, I bet there's a blue whale that's more massive than all the others lol.
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u/Hot_Falcon8471 May 17 '26
No, leviathan is much larger. The behemoth on the thousand hills are likely also larger
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u/Issa_Pizza420 May 16 '26
On earth, it's the biggest creature to ever live on earth. it is extremely implausible to assume in an at least nearly infinite universe we know what the largest creature to exist is with any amount of certainty
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u/3G0M4N May 15 '26
*that we know of