Blue whale

The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) was hunted almost to extinction until hunting was outlawed in 1966, and today humans still disturb these beautiful underwater giants. With the increase of the noise from ships and military sonar, blue whales have a hard time communicating with each other. Read about it on National Geographic. Furthermore, they are threatened by illegal whaling, pollution and fishing nets. The world population is estimated between 3,000 and 4,000 (source). They are considered an endangered species. Yesterday i saw an episode of Genographic Project on National Geographic, about the evolution on whales. According to the Genographic project, all cetaceans descended from a wolf-like creature. But a little search on google shows a lot of different views, including the hippopotamus. Did you know adult blue whales are about the same size as a boeing 737 ?

Boeing 737 photographed by Benny Bartels.

Blue Whale skeleton outside the Long Marine Laboratory of the University of California, Santa Cruz

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify the image of the skeleton of the blue whale shown above and the image of the boeing 737 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License