Skeletal System
The blue whale is the king of size, and their skeletal structure is no different. The bones alone weigh nearly 8,000 pounds making it the heaviest skeletal system in the world.
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The blue whale has a combination of vestigial appendages and amazingly precise adaptations.
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Some of these precise adaptations come in the form of body shape and jaw structure that allow the whale to survive in a medium that should be a hostile one for the ;largest animal to ever live.
The blue whales whole skeletal system has evolved over time from a land based horse like animal, to a super aquadynamic form that allows for the least amount of drag possible.
Their flipper are actually a great example of vestigial structure with an adapted purpose. As they have the same wrist and mammal like hand structure as most land mammals yet they have adapted to lose function of the structure as a "hand". Instead they have adapted to enclose the fingers inside of a flipper that is relatively small from the rest of the body to remain as aquadynamic as possible.
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While certainly smaller then other species of whales the blue whale does in fact have the vestigial remnants of hind legs. This remnant and now useless appendage is a hold over from the whales land based ancestors that has yet to be completely removed from the species entirely.
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The reason that this appendage is smaller in blue whale then other whales species adds more evidence that the blue whale has evolved over the millennia to be as streamlines as possible, yet now the appendage has reached a point where it is not longer large enough to be considered detrimental. This is the cause of the appendage persisting.
