Blue Whale Trivia
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37 free Blue Whale trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This blue whale trivia quiz covers the biggest animal ever known: how long and heavy it really gets, why Linnaeus may have named it after a mouse, what 'sulphur bottom' means, how it lunges through 220 tonnes of water to strain out four tonnes of krill a day, why its heart can slow to two beats a minute, how scientists count its earwax to age it, and why its songs are getting deeper. It also covers the four subspecies and the mystery Chilean population, blue-fin whale hybrids, the orcas that hunt calves, the 30,000-whale peak year of 1930-31, the Soviet Union's illegal hunting after the 1966 ban, ship strikes off California and Sri Lanka, and the recovery to perhaps 10,000-25,000 animals today. Every question was verified against a primary reference (the Wikipedia article on the blue whale) and carries a citation. Play it with our humpback whale, ocean and whale shark quizzes.
30 of 37 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What distinction does the blue whale hold among all animals?
Largest ever known to have existed
Largest ever known to have existed, the blue whale was long safe from whalers because of its size and speed, until exploding harpoon guns made it catchable.
Q 02In 2017, a blue whale skeleton named Hope replaced which dinosaur in the main hall of London's Natural History Museum?
Dippy the Diplodocus
Dippy the Diplodocus was only a plaster replica, and after 112 years at the museum it was taken apart and sent on a tour of museums around Britain.
Q 03The blue whale's species name, musculus, may be a pun by Linnaeus meaning what?
Little mouse
Little mouse is one reading of musculus, which also meant 'muscle' in Latin, perhaps because some flexing muscles were thought to look like moving mice.
Q 04Whalers nicknamed the blue whale 'sulphur bottom' because of what?
A yellowish tinge of diatoms on the belly
A yellowish tinge of diatoms on the belly is picked up in cold feeding waters, and the whales shed that film on returning to warmer seas.
Q 05A blue whale's tongue alone can weigh about as much as what?
An elephant
An elephant is about the weight of that tongue, which pushes seawater out through the baleen plates so the tiny prey stays trapped inside to be swallowed.
Q 06Scientists can tell individual blue whales apart by what feature?
Their skin mottling
Their skin mottling looks blue-grey when the whale is at the surface, yet seen through the water the same whale appears light blue.
Q 07Which other whale species is the blue whale known to interbreed with?
The fin
The fin whale fathered a whale killed in the North Atlantic in 2018 that experts had called a blue whale from photos, a national marine institute reported after DNA tests.
Q 08How do blue whales usually travel and feed?
Alone or in pairs
Alone or in pairs is the usual pattern, yet loose gatherings of up to 60 blue whales have been reported.
Q 09A blue whale's baleen plates are made of what material?
Keratin
Keratin, the material of human fingernails, makes up the plates, even though baleen was long known as 'whalebone'.
Q 10How high can a blue whale's spout shoot into the air?
About 10 m
About 10 m is how high it can shoot, and because spout shapes differ between species, that tall, straight column helps observers pick out a blue whale from far away.
Q 11Which sex of blue whale is larger?
The cows
The cows are the larger sex, the rarer pattern among mammals, where species with bigger males outnumber those with bigger females nearly three to one.
Q 12What lets a blue whale's throat balloon out when it gulps a huge mouthful of seawater?
Rows of pleated grooves
Rows of pleated grooves run from the chin toward the navel and spread open, and even the nerves in the floor of the mouth are stretchy enough to unfold and snap back.
Q 13What do scientists examine to estimate a blue whale's age?
Its earwax
Its earwax builds up in a light and a dark layer each year that scientists count like tree rings, but the plug can only be collected from a whale that has died.
Q 21To make most blue whale calls audible to people, how do researchers usually play back the recordings?
Sped up
Sped up, sometimes ten times over, because at natural speed much of a blue whale's call is too deep for human ears to hear.
Q 22Blue whales may hear each other from up to how far away?
1,000 miles
1,000 miles in the right conditions, yet growing noise from ships and seismic surveys can drown out the sounds they rely on to communicate.
Q 23Since blue whale calls were first recorded in the 1960s, what has happened to their pitch worldwide?
Fallen
Fallen, even though a noisier ocean should push the calls higher if whales were straining to be heard, and scientists still cannot explain the drop.
Q 14Besides communicating, what do scientists think blue whales may use their calls and excellent hearing to do?
Find their way
Find their way, perhaps: in the dark depths, their low-frequency pulses may build up a sonic picture of distant undersea features, much like sonar.
Q 15How low can a blue whale's heart rate drop during a deep dive?
2 beats per minute
2 beats per minute is the lowest recorded on a dive, and slowing the heart that far is thought to make the oxygen in its blood last longer at depth.
Q 16What does the blue whale's diet consist of almost exclusively?
Krill
Krill are tiny shrimp-like animals, yet the biggest animal alive can eat well over a tonne of them in a single day.
Q 17One blue whale gulp can hold a water volume as big as what?
Its own body
Its own body can be outsized by that gulp, and hauling in so much water costs so much energy that a lunge only pays off in extremely dense swarms of prey.
Q 18What manoeuvre have blue whales been recorded performing during lunge-feeding?
A 360-degree roll
A 360-degree roll turns the whale upside down to scoop a patch of prey, and rolling while searching may let it scan the water and pick out the densest patch.
Q 19In which season are most blue whale calves born?
Winter
Winter is when most calves are born, after the adults migrate from their polar feeding grounds to warmer waters nearer the equator.
Q 20Roughly how much weight does a newborn blue whale calf gain each day?
About 90 kg
About 90 kg a day is packed on thanks to the mother's fat-rich milk, of which a calf drinks hundreds of litres every day.
Q 24In the Eastern North Pacific, which blue whales have been recorded singing songs of repeated A and B calls?
Only males
Only males have been recorded singing these songs, which suggests they help win mates.
Q 25Which of these animals is known to attack and kill blue whales?
The orca
The orca is the attacker in documented cases, and since an adult's sheer size leaves it almost no predators, calves are thought the likelier victims.
Q 26A blue whale's average lifespan is estimated at about how long?
About 90 years
About 90 years is a typical life, yet a female has just one calf every two to three years, so the species has been slow to recover from decades of hunting.
Q 27What did the International Whaling Commission order for blue whales in 1966?
Total ban
A total ban, but only once whalers had driven the species to the brink of extinction.
Q 28Blue whale whaling peaked in 1930-31 with roughly how many animals killed?
30,000
Some 350,000-360,000 were taken from the Antarctic alone in the first half of the 20th century.
Q 29Which nation's whalers kept illegally killing blue whales into the 1970s?
The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union ran its whaling to meet production targets set by central planners, and the full scale of its illegal hunt came out only after the Cold War ended.
Q 30What was the estimated global blue whale population in the 2018 IUCN assessment?
10,000 to 25,000
10,000 to 25,000 is only a small fraction of their numbers before modern whaling, yet the population appears to be increasing.