I understand, generally, *how* they got that big but not *why*. What was the evolutionary advantage to their massive size? Is there one? Or are they just big for the sake of being big?
In: Biology
The ELI5 is: there was once a whale born abnormally big and it was able to get more food than other whales. It had babies who were also large and also could get more food than the others. Since they all compete for the same food source, the bigger whales survived and had more babies and the smaller whales died out.
Repeat this over and over with them getting bigger and bigger over millions of years and you get the modern blue whale 🐋
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