AnAge entry for Balaenoptera musculus
Classification (HAGRID: 02281)
- Taxonomy
-
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia (Taxon entry)
Order: Cetacea (Taxon entry)
Family: Balaenopteridae
Genus: Balaenoptera
- Species
- Balaenoptera musculus
- Common name
- Blue whale
- Synonyms
- Sibbaldius sulfureus, Balaena musculus
Lifespan, ageing, and relevant traits
- Maximum longevity
- 110 years (wild)
- Source
- ref. 1
- Sample size
- Medium
- Data quality
- Acceptable
- Observations
The blue whale is the largest animal on earth. Its gestation period is short when considering its size. One possible explanation is that longer gestation periods would mean that the young would be born in the season spent in the season spent in cold waters [0434]. It is estimated that these animals live over 100 years.
Life history traits (averages)
- Female sexual maturity
- 1,827 days
- Male sexual maturity
- 1,827 days
- Gestation
- 350 days
- Weaning
- 182 days
- Litter size
- 1 (viviparous)
- Litters per year
- 0.4
- Inter-litter interval
- 914 days
- Weight at birth
- 2,000,000 g
- Weight at weaning
- 17,000,000 g
- Adult weight
- 136,000,000 g
- Postnatal growth rate
Metabolism
No information on metabolism is available.
References
- [0610] Ernest (2003), Life history characteristics of placental non-volant mammals
- [0001] Carey and Judge (2000), Longevity Records: Life Spans of Mammals, Birds, Amphibians, Reptiles, and Fish
- [0434] Ronald Nowak (1999), Walker's Mammals of the World
- [0538] Don Wilson and Sue Ruff (1999), The Smithsonian Book of North American Mammals
- [0441] William Burt et al. (1998), A Field Guide to Mammals
- [0455] Virginia Hayssen et al. (1993), Asdell's Patterns of Mammalian Reproduction: A Compendium of Species-Specific Data
- [0680] Wootton (1987), The effects of body mass, phylogeny, habitat, and trophic level on mammalian age at first reproduction
External Resources
- Integrated Taxonomic Information System
- ITIS 180528
- Animal Diversity Web
- ADW account (if available)
- Encyclopaedia of Life
- Search EOL
- NCBI Taxonomy
- Taxonomy ID 9771
- Entrez
- Search all databases
- Ageing Literature
- Search Google Scholar or Search PubMed
- Images
- Google Image search
- Internet
- Search Google