# How Long Would It Take One Person to Eat a Blue Whale? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 12, 2017, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969 "2017-03-12T01:37:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/41 "2017-03-13T23:37:35Z")
I wonder what whale tastes like? Chicken, prolly. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/42 "2017-03-13T23:41:20Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Like, say the Arctic? For now. Who knows by the time you’re polishing up the last of the whale… ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/43 "2017-03-14T00:00:37Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I wonder what whale tastes like? Chicken, prolly. It’s much closer to beef or mutton. It’s a mammal, remember. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/44 "2017-03-14T02:32:47Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > It’s much closer to beef or mutton. It’s a mammal, remember. But more oily. Whale meat was used in school lunches for a long time and a lot of Japanese don’t particularly have fond memories of it. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/45 "2017-03-14T02:40:01Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > I realize too that I was envisioning a blue whale as being of a greater relative girth than it actually is, probably as a result of cartoon depictions! They’re really quite [torpedo-shaped](http://www.itravel-cabo.com/images/blue%20whale.jpg). It’s just that they just go on and on and on - they are quite legitimately huge in person, but it is mostly the length that is astounding. Come visit the Monterey Bay in the summer and go whale-watching. Good ( for variable values of “good” ) chance of a sighting. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/46 "2017-03-14T02:46:33Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > It’s much closer to beef or mutton. It’s a mammal, remember. Yeah the “tastes like chicken” part was just a joke. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/47 "2017-03-14T02:53:15Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Never was possible. There is already a term for that–sauropod. Why is sauropod better than brontosaur? Anyway, eating whale beats slurping goo in Zion. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/48 "2017-03-14T19:59:28Z")
I think the name “Brontosaurus” should be preserved for the now-fictional sauropod that was thought to be semi-aquatic, staying mostly underwater like a hippopotamus. E.g., in the original King Kong movie the raft was overturned by a Brontosaurus. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/49 "2017-03-14T21:14:34Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I think the name “Brontosaurus” should be preserved for the now-fictional sauropod that was thought to be semi-aquatic, staying mostly underwater like a hippopotamus. E.g., in the original King Kong movie the raft was overturned by a Brontosaurus. Dude! Spoilers! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![MacLir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@MacLir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacLir)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/50 "2017-03-14T21:49:30Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > There are restaurants in Iceland that serve whale–most likely not blue whale. I was once told that the cuts came from one whale in a deep freeze, taken before Iceland gave up whaling, but apparently that is not the case–they’re still whaling. > > In conclusion, please don’t eat actual whale. Unless you grew up eating it, you likely wouldn’t like it anyway. Imagine the toughest, stringiest piece of chuck steak you ever had. Now cook it in sardine oil. That’s what whale is like, as I remember it. (From long before Greenpeace and the Marine Mammal Protection Act) Blue whale, as I recall, but I was young at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/51 "2017-03-15T19:49:15Z")
So, just for the record, if all the spiders in the world got together, they could eat a 300,000 pound whale in [about 11 minutes](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2017/03/15/spiders-bugs-food-study/99209394/). (Let’s pretend for a second that they can eat every part of the whale, and I did my elephants-to-whales conversion math correctly.) ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/52 "2017-03-15T20:01:45Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > So, just for the record, if all the spiders in the world got together, they could eat a 300,000 pound whale in [about 11 minutes](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2017/03/15/spiders-bugs-food-study/99209394/). (Let’s pretend for a second that they can eat every part of the whale, and I did my elephants-to-whales conversion math correctly.) You run into the square-cube law here. There’s nowhere near enough surface area to allow all the spiders access to the whale. Almost all will be looking at the back ends of the spiders ahead of them. Now if you dispersed the whale carcass into a lot of fine bits, then maybe. That’s going to be a lot of [dynamite](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFwxH3PPWiU). ---
**Author:** ![Dana\_Scully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@Dana\_Scully](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dana_Scully)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/53 "2017-03-15T20:41:58Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > Assume they eat 2,500 calories of whale per day. A long time. ---
**Author:** ![Angstwulf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@Angstwulf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angstwulf)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2017, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/54 "2017-03-16T23:17:22Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > I’d krill for some braised whale right about now. Stop spouting off that nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2017, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/55 "2017-03-17T01:17:54Z")
> [@EdelweissPirate](#): > > Actually, it goes the other way: bone mass does not increase linearly with body mass, but rather with mass raised to the power of 1.09. So if a blue whale is 100 times the size of a smaller whale, we’d expect its ones to be 151 times as big as the smaller whale’s. This suggests a smaller proportion of edible material from the larger whale. The approximate exponent of 1.09 was derived from terrestrial animals, which support their weight on their bones. As **HoneyBadgerDC** mentioned, whales are aquatic and don’t support their weight using their bones, so whale bones could be proportionally lighter than terrestrial animals’ bones. The [Canadian Museum of Nature has a blue whale skeleton](https://nature.ca/sites/default/files/docs/fact_sheet_blue_whale.pdf) from an animal that is estimated to have weighed 80-90 tonnes. Based on the formula in your link (bones = 0.061 \* animal[sup]1.09[/sup]), the bones would be predicted to weigh 13,000-15,000 kg, but in fact they only weigh 2883 kg. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2017, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969/56 "2017-03-17T10:27:22Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > The approximate exponent of 1.09 was derived from terrestrial animals, which support their weight on their bones. As **HoneyBadgerDC** mentioned, whales are aquatic and don’t support their weight using their bones, so whale bones could be proportionally lighter than terrestrial animals’ bones. Actually, while I don’t know off the top of my head about whales, some aquatic mammals have _heaver_ bones than land mammals to act as ballast > [@](#): > > The [Canadian Museum of Nature has a blue whale skeleton](https://nature.ca/sites/default/files/docs/fact_sheet_blue_whale.pdf) from an animal that is estimated to have weighed 80-90 tonnes. Based on the formula in your link (bones = 0.061 \* animal[sup]1.09[/sup]), the bones would be predicted to weigh 13,000-15,000 kg, but in fact they only weigh 2883 kg. This could be affected by the fact that whales do not have (significant) long limb bones. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-it-take-one-person-to-eat-a-blue-whale/781969.md?page=2)