Size Matters: Only Large Whales Can Lunge-Feed Successfully
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Fox News
A new study has revealed that the Antarctic minke whale, the smallest of the baleen whales, has the smallest possible body size to capture enough prey to survive using the foraging behavior called lunge-feeding. The research showed that all filter-feeding whales are big, and that animals must have attained a large size before the unique behavior of lunge-feeding evolved. The repeated lunging requires a high investment of energy, and the efficiency of foraging this way favors a larger body size.