Blue whales never became the largest animals lived on Earth till now by being delicate eaters and in the new video which is captured by scientists at Oregon State University projects how they choose and select their meals. According to the researchers, there is a reason for their discretion. The gigantic whales grow up to the length of three school buses at times which needs to be equalized carefully for the energy gained through their food intake with the energetic costs of feeding.
According to phys.org Leigh Torres, a principal investigator with the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State "Modeling studies of blue whales 'lunge-feeding' theorize that they will not put energy into feeding on low-reward prey patches," He also added that they can see the whale making selections which are obviously incredible, as per their video footages he said their footage shows this theory in action as aerial observations of blue whales feeding on krill are rare. The whale bypasses certain krill patches presumably because the nutritional payoff isn't sufficient and targets other krill patches that are more lucrative. They think this is because blue whales are so big, and stopping to lunge-feed and then speeding up again is so energy-intensive, that whales try to maximize their effort.
The video, captured in the Southern Ocean off New Zealand was the place which the videos were captured showing a blue whale navigating towards a large number of krill - which may be as same as the size of the whale itself approximately. Then the whale turned on its side, oriented towards the starting of the krill bevy, and moves along its arbor through the entire plot, consuming nearly the entire krill crowd. The same whale reached a smaller mass of krill, which lies more upright on its way, but blasts through it indeed consuming.
Torres, who works out of Oregon State's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport said that they theorized this choice of blue whales which is clear from the video that they use this strategy. He said that the whale had the determination on the amount of krill to be gained and the effort used for having the meal should not compromise with that of slowing down. He even compared it with himself driving a car and slowing down when needed rather than applying brakes every 100 yards and accelerating it again.
As per the reports of Phys.org, The researchers analyzed the whale's lunge-feeding and found that it approached the krill patch at about 6.7 miles per hour. The performance of opening its colossal mouth to feed slowed the whale down to 1.1 mph - and getting that big body back up to cruising speed again requires a lot of energy. The rare footage was possible through the use of small drones.
