Blue Whales have begun mating with much smaller sea creatures

Not only are blue whales the biggest animals on the planet on Earth, but they’re also some of the most surprising.

New research has shown that a surprising amount of blue whales are actually mating with animals that are 85 tonnes smaller than them.

The whales, which are themselves up to 200 tonnes in size, have been found to have mated with blue fin whales at a far more regular rate than previously thought.

It comes as scientists undertook new research attempting to construct a whale genome from scratch.

Essentially, the process involves recreating the entire set of DNA instructions found in a blue whale cell, which is an incredibly complex undertaking.

The blue whale is mating with fin whales far more than previously thoughtiStock

Co-author of the new study Mark Engstrom told Live Science: “This is a long, laborious process akin to assembling a huge jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the box for guidance.”

The research, which was published in the Conservation Genetics journal, focused on B. musculus musculus, which is the most endangered subspecies of the blue whale.

A genome was built by the research team in order to comprehend the rate of inbreeding and how it could impact on the growth of the species.

According to the research, the experts were shocked to find that each sample taken from blue whales included 3.5 per cent of fin whale DNA – which is much higher than previously observed.

The fin whale is a species of baleen whaleiStock

“The amount of introgression between the species that we found was unexpected and much higher than reported previously,” Engstrom said.

Fin whales are still giants of the ocean, growing up to 26 metres and coming in as the second longest cetacean on the planet after the blue whale. However, their size difference is still pretty extraordinary.

As well as showing that blue whales were mating with fin whales a lot more than expected, the study also showed that fin whales did not take on blue whale traits.

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