Everything about a blue whale is awesome, evening looking down its nose! Why? Because it’s the largest nose in the world!

On a recent whale watching trip the captain compared the size of one blue whale nostril to the size of a human baby and a blue whale lung to the size of a bus. This massive breathing apparatus is one of the best parts of blue whale watching because as a whale surfaces you hear this powerful “whoosh.” All heads on the boat turn in the direction of the sound and the next round of whale watching begins.

A whale’s nostril is actually referred to as blowhole. The larger baleen whales have two blowholes on the top of the their heads and the smaller toothed-whales (dolphins and porpoises) have one. As whales evolved from land animals to strictly ocean animals millions of years ago, their noses moved to the top of their heads, a much smarter and easier way to breathe at the ocean’s surface.

And the blue whales are still here off Southern California’s coast! So get out there and see some blue whales and hear the largest nose to ever exist on earth exhale, it’s simply awesome.