Known for their enormous size, blue whales are not only the largest animals alive on earth... they are the largest animals ever to have lived on earth. That means they are even bigger than the dinosaurs were!
Though they were hunted to near extinction by whalers in the 1900s, at one time blue whales existed in abundance in almost all of the world's oceans. Despite their gigantic size, blue whales feed on a diet of krill - tiny crustaceans they skim from the water as they swim.
