Richard Hess, Age 11, Of Mt. Pleasant, Tex., for his question:

How large an object can a whale swallow?

The large assortment of whales is divided into two main groups  the toothed whales and the baleen whales. The famous sperm whale is a toothed whale, and he has monstrous toothy jaws to prove it. He and his kind hunt live meat in the sea. They chump off great hunks of large fish and swallow each bite whole. Mr. Sperm whale can gobble up a giant squid in a few giant size gulps.

The baleen whales have mouths fitted with curtains of baleen or whalebone. This plastic like material hangs in long strips and filters fragments of plankton from the sea. The baleen whales, biggest animals in the world, dine only on plankton. Most plankton plants and animals are microscopic, the largest are shrimp size. A baleen whale can swallow nothing larger than a shrimp or small fish.