Superpowers

Bryde's whale

Bryde’s Whales eat Plenty!

Each day, they can eat up to 4% of their body weight. This is the same as you eating nine hamburgers in just one day!

A Fan of Free Diving

Bryde’s whales can go underwater for about 15 minutes. But sometimes, when they really push themselves, they can stay underwater for up to 20 minutes. This will take them as deep as 300 meters down.

An Enormous Head for a very Large Mouth

The head of a Brydes whale is extremely large. In fact, it makes up 25% of their body. This is to make space for their very large mouth, which has inside it up to 410 baleen plates.

Each baleen plate is made up of many rows of tiny “hairs” which are used for filtering food.

A Clever Chef

Bryde’s whales are Gulp or Lunge feeders.

They can open their mouths very wide because they have elongated throat grooves. When they feed in a bait ball, this helps them to swallow huge amounts of water containing sardines or anchovies and plankton. When they do this, they look just like a giant tadpole!

Their throat also has a special adaption called a ventral throat pouch. This is very strong and when they contract it, it pushes all the water out their mouth, and through the Baleen plates.

The Baleen plates then filter the water out, but keep all the fish in!

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