Just seems so odd that there niche in the ecosystem is to eat tons of such small creatures
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Why Do Whales Which Are Huge Creatures Eat A Diet Of Mainly Small Organisms Like Krill/plankton?
Posted on October 15, 2011.
They can’t chew
no different really from large grazing mammels that have to consume huge quantities all day because grass has such little nutritional value
Krill may be small, but they are almost pure protein. And in a way, you have answered your own question — because there are tons and tons of them to eat. And they exist in many areas, and they don’t take a huge amount of skill to hunt down, and unlike eating, say, giant squid, they don’t do much by way of fighting back.
The whale fossil record tells us that whales lost their teeth *after* they turned to eating krill, presumably because going after krill meant they didn’t *have* to go after fish any more; and a common and easy-to-find food source which doesn’t fight back is a hugely successful way to support a huge body with little effort and little risk of injury.
While the blue whale eats krill almost exclusively (not plankton), other baleen whales eat fish and squid as well.