No single adjective is enough to describe the size of the blue whale, and few people realize how big it is when compared with other mammals. By any standard, it is the largest creature known to man. To be specific, one of its fins, called a fluke, would fill the cargo space of the average truck. Although its skull is the size and weight of a car, its brain is only the size of a carburetor. Its heart is so large that five strong men would be needed to lift or raise it, while its skin could be used as a tarpaulin to cover half a football field. Every person in Boston could be supplied with a whaleburger, and a pretty good one, too, from the meat of one blue whale. Combine the weights of 100 horses, 100 dairy cows, and five Indian elephants, and you would arrive at the weight of one female blue whale. Fortunately for the whale, its watery surroundings have protected it form the extinction suffered by the dinosaur millions of years ago. The passage could be entitled .