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"When these animals dive down to 300 meters, holding their breath for 12 minutes or more, they had better be sure it’s worth the cost..." I wonder what a 300 m
by M_Grey 10y ago
"When these animals dive down to 300 meters, holding their breath for 12 minutes or more, they had better be sure it’s worth the cost..."
I wonder what a 300 meter dive "costs" in terms of energy for such a massive animal, and how amazing it is that they can manage 12 minutes on one breath.
- nickff 10y agoYou might be able to estimate the amount of energy by using the volume of their lungs to find the amount of oxygen they have, then use this to calculate how much 'sugar' can be reacted with it, thus giving you the total usable energy.You may even be able to compensate for the amount of residual oxygen left in the lungs. This would of course have some significant error, as they probably leave some reserve, and have less blood oxygen at the end of the dive than at the beginning.
- eutectic 10y agoFor a blue whale I get around 5000kcal; I'm not sure if this is a little or a lot. Of course, with the various inefficiencies involved the whale would need to eat a few times more than this to break even.
- saeranv 10y agoThis is about 5.8 kWh. For comparison your average adult male uses >2kWh every day on a 2000 calorie diet.
- CapitalistCartr 10y agoI eat about 2600-3000 per day. So, for a human, 5000 in 12 minutes would be astounding.
- eutectic 10y agoYou may have noticed that whales are big.