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Featured articleBlue whale is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on May 24, 2005.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
May 18, 2005Featured article candidatePromoted
April 22, 2006Featured article reviewKept
July 9, 2007Featured article reviewKept
Current status: Featured article


"Caught"/"killed"

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Ywaz, you do need to realize that "catch" is the standard terminology used in all wildlife harvesting (which is what whaling is, Japanese pretensions notwithstanding). We don't speak about "killing" fish either. I appreciate that whales elicit a more emotional response, but when our articles on whaling overwhelmingly use "catch", this looks incongruous at the least. --Elmidae (talk · contribs)

Female weight gain of 4% per day mathematically impossible

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In the article it states "Pregnant females gain roughly four percent of their body weight daily,[86] amounting to 60% of their overall body weight throughout summer foraging periods."

However, that is clearly not right, as this would mean that female whales approximately triple/quadruple their weight every month. You can see how that would lead to bizarre situations.

I am not aware of what this figure should be or what the author was thinking when writing this. Perhaps they meant eat 4% of body weight.

About the endurance of the blue whale and the hunting of the Icelanders

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As for endurance, Robert Pittman, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Research Institute, has said of blue whales, "They have incredible endurance," and there's research that suggests medieval Icelanders likely hunted blue whales during the first hunts, so maybe that's worth adding as new information? Koo-1876 (talk) 13:47, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A statement of "great endurance" sourced from a website is redundant and meaningless. Find a peer reviewed study that actually measures that. The Icelander hunting should be sourced from the original study, not a website magazine talking about it. LittleJerry (talk) 18:14, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Live Science link for "great endurance" was also a Live Science link to the 2014 incident in Monterey Bay where a pod of killer whales harassed a blue whale in the Predators and Parasites section. So I thought it might be a good idea to add it, so I added it. Koo-1876 (talk) 12:54, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 25 March 2025

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Since the discovery of the doom spiral siphonophore, the blue whale is only the heaviest known animal in the ocean. The title of biggest is ambiguous now, as the longest known doom spiral siphonophore nearly doubled the blue whale's record for longest known animal in the ocean.

Recommend changing:

Reaching a maximum confirmed length of 29.9 m (98 ft) and weighing up to 199 t (196 long tons; 219 short tons), it is the largest animal known ever to have existed.

To

Weighing up to 199 t (196 long tons; 219 short tons), the Blue Whale is the heaviest animal known ever to have existed. At a maximum confirmed length of 29.9 m (98 ft), it is also the second longest animal known to have ever existed, after the doom spiral (Praya dubia) siphonophore's maximum length of 50 m (160 ft)[1].


LilithJRose (talk) 22:09, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]