5/30/2023 0 Comments Deep blue shark eating whale![]() ![]() Whale sharks and baleen whales are both filter feeders, but when you look at the details of how they feed, you realize how different they are. Along the surface of the water, right whales swim with their mouth open, so food is caught in the baleen fringes inside their mouth. Like other baleen whales, right whales filter their food through their baleen plates, but they do it in a different way. By feeding this way, they often leave long trails of mud behind them, and “feeding pits” in the sea floor. To do this, they slowly swim on their sides and filter their food through their baleen plates. They suck sediment and small benthic crustaceans called amphipods from the sea floor. Gray whales, a family of baleen whales, are bottom feeders. Their food (tons of krill, other zooplankton, crustaceans and small fish) are licked off their baleen using their tongue and swallowed. Generally, baleen whales strain large volumes of ocean water through their baleen plates, trapping the food on their baleen. These plates are broad at the whale’s gumline and taper into a fringe that forms a curtain inside the whale’s mouth. Baleen plates are flexible, strong and made of a protein similar to our fingernails. Baleen whales were named for the long plates of baleen that hang in a row (similar to the teeth of a comb) from their upper gumline. There are 12 baleen whale species divided into 4 families, each of which has a slightly different feeding method. The filtering pads are broad mess pads full of millimeter-wide pores that act like a sieve, allowing water to pass through while capturing food particles.īaleen whales feed in an entirely different way. Food moves through filtering pads that cover the entrance of their throats. In one of their filter-feeding methods, they suction water into their mouths at high velocities while remaining stationary. ![]() In whale sharks, teeth don’t play a major role in feeding. But how they go about filter feeding is completely different. You see whale sharks and baleen whales are both filter feeders, animals that eat by straining tiny food, like plankton, from the water. Experiences like this make me appreciate the variety of nature’s feeding techniques. I had been snorkeling off the coast of Tofo in Mozambique and felt that this was a dream come true. The gentle giant moved gracefully to the surface of the water and began feeding next to me. Suddenly out of the deep blue water appears a whale shark directly beneath me. ![]()
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