What do Humpback Whales eat?
And who eats them?
What do they eat?
Humpback Whales are seasonal feeders and carnivores. They are also filter feeders like all baleen whales. They feed on tiny crustaceans (krill), plankton, and small fish (like herring, mackerel, capelin, and sandeel). They gulp their food down in huge mouth fulls of water. They are able to do this because their throat slits expand and then contract forcing the water out of their mouths and trapping their prey in the long strips of baleen in there mouths.
An Average sized humpback whale will eat 4,400 to 5,500 pounds of plankton, krill, and small fish in one feeding session. They have two feeding sessions a day. This is when they are in the cold northern waters, and they stay there for about 120 day
What eats them?
Humpback Whales have a life expectancy of 45 to 50 years. Most of them die as very young calves that get eaten or they are abandoned by their mother. Humpback whales have very few natural predators, they are the killer whales, sharks, and piousness fish that are accidentally ingested. The major predator in the Humpback Whales life is Humans. When whaling was a prominent business 23,000 animals were taken. When whaling was finally outlawed in 1966, there was only 1,000animals left. The whales also get caught in fishing nets, and have head on collisions with boats, oil spills are another major threat to the survival of the animals.
