Animal Lovers Web Forum

The blue whale is the largest animal known to have existed, even larger than the largest known dinosaurs. It can grow to 24 to 30 m (80 to 100 ft) long, as long as a Boeing 737 airliner and weigh 100 – 150 tonnes. So an adult blue whale can weigh as much as 25 adult African elephants. Some large individuals can weigh upto a colossal 200 tonnes. 

Due to its large size, several organs of the blue whale are the largest in the animal kingdom. A blue whale's tongue weighs around 2.7 tonnes which approaches the weight of an adult female elephant.   When fully expanded, its mouth is large enough to hold up to 90 tonnes of food and water.




The most famous modern shark, the great white shark is the 3rd largest shark alive today behind the basking shark and the whale shark. The great white sharks grow to an average of 4.5 - 5 meters (15 - 16 ft) in length and the largest of them gets to 6 meters (20 ft) and a weight of upto 2.2 tonnes.




The Baird's beaked whale is the largest of all the beaked whales. It reaches the length of 10.7–13 metres (39–43 ft) and weigh in the neighborhood of 10 to 14 tonnes.




The Greenland shark is one of the largest living species of shark, with dimensions comparable to those of the great white shark. Greenland sharks grow to 6.4 m (21 ft) and 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) and possibly up to 7.3 m (24 ft) and more than 1,400 kg (3,100 lb). Most Greenland sharks observed have been around 2.44–4.8 m (8.0–16 ft) long and weigh up to 400 kg (880 lb). As an adaptation to living at depth,it has a high concentration of trimethylamine N-oxide in its tissues, which causes the meat to be toxic. Greenland shark flesh treated to reduce toxin levels is eaten in Iceland as a delicacy. They can be found at depths of more than 1,200 metres, making sightings of the shark rare. The Greenland shark is an apex predator and mostly eats fish. It has never been observed hunting. Recorded fish prey have included smaller sharks, seals,skates, eels, herring, capelin, Arctic char, cod, redfish, sculpins, lumpfish, wolffish, and flounder. Greenland sharks have also been found with remains of even polar bears, horses, moose and reindeer (in one case an entire reindeer body) in their stomachs. The Greenland shark is known to be a scavenger, and is attracted by the smell of rotting meat in the water.

An examination of 28 specimens in one study published in 2016 determined by radiocarbon dating that the oldest of the animals that they sampled had lived for about 392 ± 120 years (a minimum of 272 years and a maximum of 512 years). They used a radiocarbon dating method previously used to analyse the age of whales for the first time on a fish. It suggests the Greenland shark surpasses other species known for long life, including sea turtles (about 100 years) tortoises (between 100 and 255 years), and bowhead whales (around 200 years).The only creature believed to live longer is the ocean quahog, a type of edible clam which has a life expectancy of 507 years.

Quote:The mysterious Greenland shark, which can reach more than five metres in length, can reach an age of around 400 years, researchers say. They reach sexual maturity at the age of about 150, a new study reports. The Greenland shark is now the oldest-known vertebrate to roam the Earth.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...143218.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/...rth--stud/


Animals that outlive humans :

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/the-...e31386076/

I'm sure that many people don't know about this shark which is indeed alive today. I remember seeing this shark once in a documentary. The 2 different things about this shark is that, it is big as a great white shark or at least comes close to it's size. The another thing which is also amazing is it's lifespan. Seriously an age between 512 and 272 years ? Holy Earth, this is a lucky animal.

Those are all interesting animals. The blue whale is always impressive. We just can't take in how large it really is.

The real star is the Greenland Shark. They have an incredible life span and the species has been around a long time.
A lot of history has passed by as these sharks live and grow. The shark is older than my country. 

I still find it hard to believe that there are clams and sponges and other sea creatures that live that long. Life on land must be harder. Life spans are definitely shorter.

The whale shark is the largest fish alive today. The average size of adult whale sharks is estimated at 9.8 m (32 ft) and 9 tonnes. The largest verified specimen was caught on 11 November 1949, near Baba Island, in Karachi, Pakistan. It was 12.65 m (41.5 ft) long and weighed about 21.5 tonnes. Stories exist of larger specimens with lengths of 18 m (59 ft) and 45.5 tonnes are common in the popular literature, but no scientific records support their existence. The whale shark holds many records for sheer size in the animal kingdom, most notably being by far the largest living non mammalian vertebrate.

Whale sharks are amazing. I wonder if there are bigger ones in the ocean that we have never seen. The oceans are a big place.
It is a beautiful shark. Can you imagine seeing one....from a really big ship of course.

Are they bigger than Megalodon? I can't remember Meg's size.

(01-08-2019, 04:59 PM)Catherine Wrote: [ -> ]Whale sharks are amazing. I wonder if there are bigger ones in the ocean that we have never seen. The oceans are a big place. It is a beautiful shark. Can you imagine seeing one....from a really big ship of course.

Are they bigger than Megalodon? I can't remember Meg's size.

Indeed whale sharks are amazing and they are different from most sharks because they are filter feeder. No, megalodon is the largest shark that ever existed. Later on, i will add an image of megalodon and whale shark together, so that you can see the big size difference.

The average size of megalodon might be 50 - 55 feet and the maximum upto 60 feet. Possibly it might have been slightly more than 60 feet. The size of this animal is based on the known tooth. It's highly unlikely that it is going to be 75 feet like seen in the movie 'The Meg'. In movies, mostly they exaggerate animal sizes. Even though 60 feet is not a small size, a 60 feet megalodon is more massive and it is a big threat to anything that lived in the ocean.

A sixty foot shark is plenty big enough. Movies like the exaggerate things because people are hard to impress when they don't know much about an animal. At 50 foot a Meg would have been a serious predator.  A sixty foot one would have been beyond everything. Making the shark bigger in the movie was not necessary. They would have been better to use a smaller shark and shown us how good a hunter she was. That would have been scary.

I didn't realize the whale sharks were filter feeders.

(01-10-2019, 03:43 PM)Catherine Wrote: [ -> ]Making the shark bigger in the movie was not necessary. They would have been better to use a smaller shark and shown us how good a hunter she was. That would have been scary.

I didn't realize the whale sharks were filter feeders.

In one site i read that they make the shark look big because big and scary makes more money. 
Oh, have you not seen the face of whale sharks in the pictures or videos ? Their body only looks like sharks but it's face is a different story. It's one of the three plankton-eating sharks besides the basking shark and megamouth shark. The deep water megamouth shark is even weirder, it is rarely seen by humans. Among these 3 filter feeders, only the basking shark has the look of normal sharks.

Here is the comparison of megalodon and whale shark which also has basking shark and great white shark.
 

The basking shark is the second largest living fish, after the whale shark, and one of three plankton-eating sharks besides the whale shark and megamouth shark. On average, it reaches a length of 6–8 m (20–26 ft) and weighs about 5.2 tonnes. Some specimens still surpass 9–10 m (30–33 ft), but after years of large-scale fishing, specimens of this size have become rare.They possess the typical shark lamniform body plan and have been mistaken for great white sharks. The two species can be easily distinguished by the basking shark's cavernous jaw, up to 1 m (3 ft 3 in) in width, longer and more obvious gill slits that nearly encircle the head and are accompanied by well-developed gill rakers, smaller eyes, and smaller average girth. The largest accurately measured specimen was trapped in a herring net in the Bay of Fundy, Canada, in 1851. Its total length was 12.27 m (40.3 ft) and it weighed an estimated 19 tonnes.

I can see that megalodon is much bigger. It isn't just length. Meg has a deeper body and I bet it is wider. The movies make meg bigger, but more scary would be to show the shark for the intense predator that it was. People judge things by size. A smarter faster shark is a more serious threat.

Of course the plankton eating sharks were not predators, but people would still react the same way towards them.

I have never seen a shark in the wild. It would be an incredible experience to see any of the sharks. I live on a large fresh water lake. I am not likely to see anything interesting.

(01-11-2019, 03:38 PM)Catherine Wrote: [ -> ]I can see that megalodon is much bigger. It isn't just length. Meg has a deeper body and I bet it is wider. 

I have never seen a shark in the wild. It would be an incredible experience to see any of the sharks. I live on a large fresh water lake. I am not likely to see anything interesting.

Yes, the meg should had a deeper body. At this size, if you put it next to the blue whale, the meg doesn't look much small because the height of the shark body is more than the height of a baleen whale body. I noted that the height of the 18 m (60 ft) meg body is nearly close to the height of the blue whale body despite being 40 feet shorter in overall length than the blue whale. If you compare the meg and a baleen whale at equal length, the baleen whale will look small.

I have never seen a shark in the wild either and of course it would be an incredible experience to see any of the big sharks and whales. Fresh water lake sounds interesting, at least you live in a better place. I'm stuck in a stupid place and i'm not likely to see anything interesting either.