Why do whales eat a huge amount of small fishes instead of a few large ones?

Question

I remember watching a documentary once and learned that whales need to eat tonnes (literally) of krill per day to survive. I don’t understand why this is better than eating small amounts of large fishes instead.

In: 298

Answer 1

The quantity and sustainability of the food source matters of course. There is another reason however, the size of a whale’s throat is quite small relative to its size. A whale cannot swallow a human believe it or not. So they would need a very large number of “stream sized” fish. These quantities are simply not available where whales live.