蓝鲸 is not a single postcard animal. It is a set of populations, subspecies and human rules inside the wildlife family of this atlas.
Diversity inside the type
Field guides collapse many lineages into the English word 蓝鲸. Subspecies, flyways and captive lines do not share one fate -- bald eagles and Philippine eagles, or western and mountain gorillas, are the caution.
This atlas picks a Wikipedia title as the hero image and then keeps the rest of the grade in view so a recovered stock cannot launder a CR cousin.
Life in the landscape
A rorqual with ventral pleats, a 3 m heart in the public myth (the real heart is smaller than the postcard), and baleen for krill. Size is a filter-feeding outcome.
Lunge-feeding on krill swarms -- the most expensive gulp, paid by the densest food. Fasting between polar summer and low-latitude winter.
Culture and meaning
English-language culture met the 蓝鲸 through film, law, heraldry and zoos. Those portrayals move money and sometimes take; they are not a field census.
The culture chapter dates posters and statutes so a 1975 film or a 1961 logo cannot pretend to be a 2020s Red List.
Conservation and money
Endangered. Some populations (California) are healthier; Antarctic blue whales remain a fraction of pre-whaling biomass.
Tourism, conflict payments, quotas and captive loans are dated economic bands in the market chapter -- not live prices and not a best-species prize.