Whales would like to point as well, but they don’t have fingers. This is also why so very few whales are active on the internet and ties in with the fact that you very rarely observes whales hitch-hiking.
Whoops, I swear I had a point in there somewhere last night but I seem to have misplaced it, and can’t remember at all what I was going to say.
stupid submit reply button getting in the way of my mouse…
Well, I know Dogbert said “Shave the Whales” but I don’t think they use electric razors or hot water, so they use very little electricity.
What a blowhole.
Don’t upset him, you’ll make him blubber.
You will not be making any fat jokes in this thread. At least, narwhal I have anything to say about it.
I interpreted the comparison in the following way:
Add up the calories a blue whale consumes per day on average:
Answer ≈ 7 million calories per day
≈ 24,000 kilojoules per day
Add up the wattage an American uses up in a day on average:
Answer ≈ 1280 watts continuously
≈ 30 kilowatt Hours per day
≈ 100,000 kilojoules per day
So an American uses ≈ 4 times as much energy per day as a blue whale. Correct?
As a side note, it turns out the blue whales are extremely efficient eaters.
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2010/12/the_remarkable_efficiency_of_a_blue_whale.html
What is your source for the 7million calories per day? Wikipedia (far from the absolute authority) said 1.5 million kilocalories per day.
…need to edit
Thanks for the fact-check. Let me redo the math…
corrected version :
Add up the calories a blue whale consumes per day on average:
Answer ≈ 1.5 million calories per day
≈ 6,250 kilojoules per day
Add up the wattage an American uses up in a day on average:
Answer ≈ 1280 watts continuously
≈ 30 kilowatt Hours per day
≈ 100,000 kilojoules per day
So by this conversion an American uses ≈ 16 times as much energy per day as a blue whale. (unless I made any other mistakes)
What does this have to do with anything? Just because blue whales are large doesn’t necessarily mean they should consume more “energy.” Blue whales don’t build roads, attend churches, or take philosophy classes, either. Should I be shocked?
P.S. Whales are planktonvores vs Americans who are mcdonaldvores.
P.P.S. Their "fact"oid would be a lot more relevant if they compared the energy usage of one first world nation’s inhabitants to another’s. You can’t even compare the humans in third world countries to us because they are SO FUCKING POOR and output SO FUCKING LITTLE worth to humanity as a whole.
I mean, the energy consumed by an American construction worker may well outstrip both the energy consumed by a blue whale and a rural African male. This is not necessarily worrisome.
Pfft. What’ve blue whales done for me lately?
What is so salient about this? Let’s say it is true. What have whales done for us lately?
Umm, 1.5 million kilocalories is approximately 6.27 million kilojoules, so you’re off by a factor of a thousand. Although I have doubts about both 1.5 million kilo-calories for whales and 1280 watts continuously for Americans.
“When used in scientific contexts, the term calorie refers to the gram calorie. In nutritional contexts, however, a larger unit is more useful. In such contexts the term calorie can be taken to refer to the kilogram calorie.”
I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to make an adjustment for nutritional calories by a factor of 1,000.
Mods, please close this thread. It serves no porpoise.
A blue whale cannot possibly subsist on 1.5 million calories a day (1500 kcal) – that’s less than a lot of humans require. Therefore the only reasonable assumption is that the number is 1.5 million kcal a day, which is 6.276 million kilojoules.
oops
second corrected version :
Add up the calories a blue whale consumes per day on average:
Answer ≈ 1.5 million kilocalories per day
≈ 6,250 million kilojoules per day
Add up the wattage an American uses up in a day on average:
Answer ≈ 1280 watts continuously
≈ 30 kilowatt Hours per day
≈ 100,000 kilojoules per day
So by this conversion an American uses ≈ 1/60th as much energy per day as a blue whale, assuming all my figures are correct (which I doubt at this point).
I’m glad you’re in the minority, that kind of thinking leads to a situation where’d we’d have no Straight Dope at all!