![]() ![]() I remember visiting the Museum as a child and being amazed when I came face-to-face with the blue whale skeleton. ![]() Richard Sabin, the Museum's leading whale expert, says: 'Whales are incredibly mysterious and behaviourally complex creatures, as well as being the giants of the ocean. Since then the population of blue whales has steadily grown to its current level of around 20,000. That year, in London, the world took a remarkable decision to legally protect blue whales from commercial hunting. Decades of commercial hunting drove the species to the brink of extinction, with only around 400 thought to be left in 1966. ![]() In the 1800s there were an estimated 250,000 blue whales across the world's oceans. Blue whales were hunted to the brink of extinction in the twentieth century, but were also one of the first species that humans decided to save on a global scale. The Museum named the female blue whale Hope as a symbol of humanity's power to shape a sustainable future. #Largest whale fullIt was bought by the Museum and first displayed in the Mammal Hall in 1934, where it was suspended above a life-size model of a blue whale, though it was not in full view. The skeleton is from a whale that became stranded in 1891 in Wexford Harbour, Ireland, 10 years after the Museum opened in South Kensington. The blue whale is the largest creature ever to have lived. The original 25.2-metre-long blue whale skeleton is suspended from the ceiling of the Natural History Museum's Hintze Hall. A 3D model of Hope the blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus. ![]()
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