Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Just a blue whale's tongue weighs as much as an adult elephant. But what caused blue whales to grow to such an extraordinary size?

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Fossil records make one evolutionary pattern especially ...

Blue whale calves are huge at birth but still vulnerable, and orca attacks on them are rare, high-risk events that require coordinated pod hunting. Mothers defend calves by positioning their massive ...

The Numbers First The only intact blue whale heart ever preserved and studied in detail came from a specimen that washed ...

The largest dataset of cetacean genes ever collated has helped Flinders University scientists deep dive into the blue to fathom the triumph of baleen whale evolution. "We actually know very little ...

The blue whale holds the title as the largest animal ever known to have lived on Earth. This video explores how big blue whales can grow, how they survive in the ocean, and what makes them such ...

Only two blue whale births have ever been recorded in human history, both decades ago. This remains an extraordinary mystery, given there used to be hundreds of thousands of blue whales before whaling ...

The incident highlights a much bigger crisis: an estimated 20,000 whales are struck and killed by ships each year.

Photo of a large blue whale with bright light on a black background. Insulation.© ARomadov/Shutterstock.com Blue whale calves enter the world already the size of a bus, yet they still face danger. A ...