Do whales eat plankton or krill??
• Next message: Phil Clapham: “Extinct whales and whaling” • Previous message: Phil Clapham: “Belly buttons” • Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] Hi: It depends on which whale you’re talking about. There are around a dozen or so species of large whales, and their diets vary a lot. The only large whale with teeth, the sperm whale, feeds on squid and other deep-water prey. The others all have baleen (a filtration system kind of like a huge sieve in the mouth). Baleen whales include (among several others) the blue, fin, humpback, gray, right and bowhead whales. Some baleen whales feed on true plankton. Right whales are plankton feeders, taking tiny animals called copepods which are about the size of a grain of rice; they eat huge quantities of these animals, which are among the most abundant food in the ocean and are found in dense patches. Gray whales often feed on benthic amphipods, critters that live in the mud on the sea floor. Other baleen whales (like hum
