Heaviest animal

What to remember

The heaviest specimen ever weighed was a blue whale 27.6 metres long, and the scales read 190 tonnes. Longer individuals, up to 33.6 metres, have been recorded but not weighed; the biggest of them is estimated to have reached 250 tonnes or more.

A typical blue whale is closer to 110 tonnes and 24 m. This baleen whale of the rorqual family is the largest animal known to have ever existed, ahead of large sauropod dinosaurs. Females are larger than males, and its long, slender body ranges through shades of greyish-blue on top and is somewhat lighter underneath.

The giant feeds almost exclusively on krill. Four subspecies are recognised, in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, the Southern Ocean, the Indian Ocean and South Pacific, and the Northern Indian Ocean, and a population off Chile may form a fifth.