CHAPTER XI 

 THE LARGEST ANIMAL THAT EVER LIVED 



THE blue whale is not only the largest animal 

 that lives today upon the earth or in its wa- 

 ters, but, so far as is known, it is the largest 

 animal that has ever lived. Even those giant ex- 

 tinct reptiles, the dinosaurs, which splashed along 

 the borders of the inland seas of Wyoming and Mon- 

 tana 3,000,000 years ago, could not approach a blue 

 whale either in length or weight. 



In 1903, Dr. F. A. Lucas weighed in sections a 

 blue whale taken at Newfoundland. The animal was 

 78 feet long and 35 feet around the shoulders; the 

 head was 19 feet in length and the flukes 16 feet from 

 tip to tip. The total weight was 63 tons; the flesh 

 weighed 40 tons, the blubber 8 tons, the blood, viscera, 

 and baleen 7 tons, and the bones 8 tons. So far as 

 I am aware this is the only specimen which has ever 

 been actually weighed. 



Exaggerated accounts of the size of this species are 

 current even in reputable books on natural history, 

 but the largest specimen which has yet been actually 

 measured and recorded is one 87 feet long, stranded 

 a few years ago upon the coast of New Zealand ; this 

 animal must have weighed at least 75 tons. I have 



140 



