How big is an actual blue whale? #FridayReflections

While talking with a fellow doctor recently, we drifted down to the topic of the largest living creature on the planet. Now it seemed an easy enough answer to me - the blue whale, of course. But his next question really had me stumped.

'How big is an actual blue whale? In comparison to an elephant? Or a human being?'
Now, you and I know to say 'Very big' but do you know the actual figures? Sure we studied it as kids once upon a time but I honestly did not remember. My guess that day to him (without checking the internet) was that a blue whale must be equal to around 100 tonnes i.e. 20 elephants or 1000 human beings. How good do you think my guesses were?

We will get back to that. But before that, here are some other fun facts about the big blues of the oceans.

1. A blue whale weighs around 3 tonnes at birth. It gains around 100 kilos every day in its first year (so you might have trouble buying the correct size of baby outfits while going to visit the new parents.)
2. Blue whales eat around 4000 kgs everyday of shrimp-like creatures called krill (which is close to my diet if you substitute krill with prawns. So pffft to them on that one!)
3. The weight of their tongue alone is equal to that of one adult female elephant.
4. The blue whale is not just the largest but also the loudest animal on the planet. Their call is louder than that of a jet engine.
5. In good conditions, it is said they can hear each other up to a distance of 1600 kms. (Which means it is useless playing Chinese Whispers with them because they never get it wrong.)
6. Their heart is the size of a small car. 
7. Their heartbeat can be heard from two miles away.
8. The vessel pumping blood from a whale's heart is large enough for an adult human being to crawl inside.
9. A blue whale is around 25 - 30 meters in length.
10. They live around 80 - 90 years.

Okay. Your time is up. Done with your guesses about the blue whale vs elephant vs man comparisons? Well, here are the actual results.

• A blue whale, on average, weighs between 140 to 200 tonnes. 
• Considering the weight of an average Indian male elephant is 5.4 tonnes (the female is half at 2.7), that would mean a blue whale would be the size of over 36 Indian male elephants!
• And considering the average human weight is around 60 kgs, that would mean that a blue whale would be the equivalent of over 3300 human beings!

My job is done here... now it is your turn to go show off this new found("forgotten-but-newly-remembered") general knowledge and add it into conversations to show off how intelligent you are. Me, I'm off to eat. I don't know why but I suddenly have a craving for lots of kilos of prawns.

Author's note:

I am linking this to today's #FridayReflections blogger prompt which asked us to write about an interesting conversation from recent times. You can find posts from fellow bloggers for Friday Reflections here.