Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff. I'm Lauren Vogelebomb, and this is a classic episode from the Vault. Today's classic has to do with whales. They are seemingly impossibly bigger than any of their cousins that live on land for a few good reasons. But given those, why aren't they even bigger? Hey brain stuff? Lauren Voglebomb. Here. If you've ever been whale watching, visited a large aquarium, or even seen the skeleton of a whale in a museum of natural history, you know the majestic massiveness of these aquatic mammals. The largest mammal to have ever lived on Earth in the history of the planet is not some prehistoric monstrosity. It's actually the blue whale, and is alive right now swimming around in our oceans. Whales range in size from the massive blue whales, which can grow to more than ninety feet that's twenty seven meters in length, to the relatively tiny pigmy sperm whales, which measure a measly ten feet or three meters in length. But with all that ocean to swim around in, why aren't whales even bigger? It's not like they have to support their big bodies on legs and walk around. For that matter, though, why aren't they smaller? Both answers have to do with food and heat. At least that's what researchers at Stanford University found when they compiled the body mass data for nearly four thousand living whales and three thousand fossilized species. Their analysis determined that aquatic mammals actually face more size constraints than their counterparts on land. The study authors determined that there are two main factors why whales are big but not bigger, heat loss and metabolism. Oceans can be pretty cold places to live, and whales, while very intelligent, don't really have the aquatic equivalent to thermal underwear. So because they're warm blooded mammals, they have to be large enough to keep from losing too much body heat to the surrounding water thermoregulation. Then it keeps whales from being the size of, say dogs. Study co author Jonathan Payne, a professor of geological sciences at Stanford School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, explained in a pressed statement, when you're very small, you lose heat back into the water so fast there's no way to eat enough food to keep up. And speaking of eating, whales have to do it a lot. Like all mammals, they convert that food into energy for swimming, growing, and doing other whale like things. That's the metabolic system at work. But the researchers suggest that the metabolism of whales only gets faster as they get bigger, and so they can only get so large. Another study co author, Craig McLain of the Louisiana University's Marine Consortium, explained it this way. Basically, animals are machines that require energy to operate. This need for energy places hard limits on what animals can do and how big they can be. So it boils down to how much which whales can eat versus their metabolic rate that keeps whales from getting infinitely large. But how do those massive blue whales get so massive? They have bay lean instead of teeth and strain their food a little shrimp like creatures called krill instead of chewing it. Krill are only a few centimeters long, but they really add up. Every day a blue whale eats about eight thousand pounds. That's over three thousand, six hundred kilos of krill so blue whales are not only the largest whales in the ocean, they're also the most efficient eaters of all. Today's episode is based on the article why are Whales so Big? On HowStuffWorks dot com written by Kristin Halgeisler. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. The four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff. I'm Lauren Vogelebomb, and this is a classic episode from the Vault. Today's classic has to do with whales. They are seemingly impossibly bigger than any of their cousins that live on land for a few good reasons. But given those, why aren't they even bigger? Hey brain stuff? Lauren Voglebomb. Here. If you've ever been whale watching, visited a large aquarium, or even seen the skeleton of a whale in a museum of natural history, you know the majestic massiveness of these aquatic mammals. The largest mammal to have ever lived on Earth in the history of the planet is not some prehistoric monstrosity. It's actually the blue whale, and is alive right now swimming around in our oceans. Whales range in size from the massive blue whales, which can grow to more than ninety feet that's twenty seven meters in length, to the relatively tiny pigmy sperm whales, which measure a measly ten feet or three meters in length. But with all that ocean to swim around in, why aren't whales even bigger? It's not like they have to support their big bodies on legs and walk around. For that matter, though, why aren't they smaller? Both answers have to do with food and heat. At least that's what researchers at Stanford University found when they compiled the body mass data for nearly four thousand living whales and three thousand fossilized species. Their analysis determined that aquatic mammals actually face more size constraints than their counterparts on land. The study authors determined that there are two main factors why whales are big but not bigger, heat loss and metabolism. Oceans can be pretty cold places to live, and whales, while very intelligent, don't really have the aquatic equivalent to thermal underwear. So because they're warm blooded mammals, they have to be large enough to keep from losing too much body heat to the surrounding water thermoregulation. Then it keeps whales from being the size of, say dogs. Study co author Jonathan Payne, a professor of geological sciences at Stanford School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, explained in a pressed statement, when you're very small, you lose heat back into the water so fast there's no way to eat enough food to keep up. And speaking of eating, whales have to do it a lot. Like all mammals, they convert that food into energy for swimming, growing, and doing other whale like things. That's the metabolic system at work. But the researchers suggest that the metabolism of whales only gets faster as they get bigger, and so they can only get so large. Another study co author, Craig McLain of the Louisiana University's Marine Consortium, explained it this way. Basically, animals are machines that require energy to operate. This need for energy places hard limits on what animals can do and how big they can be. So it boils down to how much which whales can eat versus their metabolic rate that keeps whales from getting infinitely large. But how do those massive blue whales get so massive? They have bay lean instead of teeth and strain their food a little shrimp like creatures called krill instead of chewing it. Krill are only a few centimeters long, but they really add up. Every day a blue whale eats about eight thousand pounds. That's over three thousand, six hundred kilos of krill so blue whales are not only the largest whales in the ocean, they're also the most efficient eaters of all. Today's episode is based on the article why are Whales so Big? On HowStuffWorks dot com written by Kristin Halgeisler. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. The four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.