50 Fun Facts About Largest Organisms

Which marine mammal, a krill-eating giant, is the largest animal known to have ever existed?

Blue whale hearts set records too: the heart of one stranded animal weighed 180 kg, the largest known in any animal.

Pando, a Utah forest of about 47,000 stems sharing one root system, is a clone of which tree?

Quaking aspen sends up new stems from its roots, and Pando, at an estimated 6,000 tonnes, is the heaviest tree known.

The largest known fungal colony, a honey mushroom spanning about 3.5 square miles, lies beneath which US state?

Oregon's Malheur National Forest holds the colony nicknamed the humongous fungus, which may weigh as much as 35,000 tons.

Which giant sequoia in California, named after a Civil War commander, is the largest living single-stem tree by volume?

General Sherman was once renamed in honor of Karl Marx by a socialist logging colony, and got its old name back when the colony was disbanded in 1892.

Hyperion, the tallest known living tree at more than 115 metres, belongs to which species?

Coast redwood Hyperion was found in 2006 by two naturalists, and it took the height record from another California redwood, the Stratosphere Giant.

A single seagrass plant cloned across about 180 km of seabed, the largest plant known, grows off which country?

Australia is home to the giant, a ribbon weed that needed at least 4,500 years of creeping across the seafloor to become the largest known organism by area.

Which slow, filter-feeding giant is the largest fish alive today, with one individual reliably recorded at 18.8 metres?

Whale shark mouths can hold over 300 rows of tiny teeth, yet the fish feeds by filtering plankton, fish eggs and small schooling fish from the water.

Which deep-sea animal of Antarctic waters is the heaviest living invertebrate and has the largest eyes ever documented?

Colossal squid eyes measure about 27 to 30 cm across, and the heaviest specimen, a 495 kg female, was hauled up by a New Zealand fishing boat in 2007.

Which cold-water jelly, one of the largest known, trails sticky tentacles that can stretch 30 metres or more?

Lion's mane jellyfish carry around 1,200 stinging tentacles, which they use to capture and pull in fish and smaller jellies.

Which rainforest plant of Southeast Asia produces the largest individual flower on Earth, about a metre across?

Rafflesia lives hidden inside a host vine and shows itself only to bloom; the widest flower ever measured was 1.14 metres across.

Which is the largest and heaviest living land animal, whose biggest measured bull stood nearly 4 metres at the shoulder?

African bush elephant ears can grow as large as 2 metres by 1.5 metres, and they double as radiators that help shed body heat.

Which flightless bird, the tallest and heaviest alive, has the largest eyes of any land vertebrate?

Common ostrich hens also lay the largest eggs of any living bird, in a communal nest that the male scrapes out of the ground.

Which bird has the longest wingspan of any living bird, up to 3.7 metres, and can glide for hours without flapping?

Wandering albatross flights ring Antarctica, making it one of the most far-ranging birds as well as the widest-winged.

Which reptile, the largest alive, has the strongest bite ever recorded for an animal in a laboratory?

Saltwater crocodile jaws closed with 16,414 newtons of force in the test, beating a record previously held by an American alligator.

Which Indonesian reptile is the largest living lizard, with males reaching 3 metres long and 150 kg?

Komodo dragon bites do not depend on filthy, bacteria-laden mouths, as legend has it; the slashing bite delivers venom and saliva that stops blood clotting.

Which mostly aquatic snake is the heaviest in the world, with females growing far larger than the males?

Green anaconda females average about 4.6 metres against roughly 3 metres for males, though the reticulated python holds the title of longest snake.

Which sea turtle is the largest of all living turtles and can weigh 500 kilograms?

Leatherback turtles are among the deepest-diving marine animals, and their flexible carapace helps them withstand the pressure of dives to 1,200 metres.

Which South American animal, a close relative of the guinea pig, is the largest living rodent?

Capybara share a quirk with guinea pigs: they cannot make vitamin C, and captive animals without supplements have developed signs of scurvy.

Which animal is the largest living land carnivore by body mass, with adult males weighing 300 to 800 kg?

Polar bear skin is black beneath the pale fur and absorbs heat, while a layer of fat up to 10 cm thick sits underneath it.

Which deep-diving marine mammal is the largest toothed predator on Earth and has the largest brain of any animal?

Sperm whale clicks are the loudest sounds made by any animal, and its brain is more than five times heavier than a human's.

The titan arum of Sumatra, whose flower spike can stand over 3 metres tall, is notorious for smelling of what?

Rotting flesh is the scent that lures the carrion beetles and flesh flies that pollinate it, and the spike heats up to about 37 °C to help carry the smell.

Which marine arthropod has the greatest leg span of any, reaching about 3.7 metres from claw to claw?

Japanese spider crab claws were singled out in the first scientific description of the species for the serious injuries they can cause.

Which shallow-water mollusc, the largest living bivalve, gets most of its food from algae living in its tissues?

Giant clam shells open by day so the algae in the mantle can catch the sun; the largest known specimen was 137 cm long and weighed about 250 kg alive.

Which invertebrate of northern European seas, barely a centimetre wide, has been reported at lengths of up to 55 metres?

Bootlace worm specimens typically measure 5 to 15 metres, and the 55-metre reports may describe animals stretched beyond their usual length.

The heaviest spider in the world, a South American giant with a body up to 13 cm long, belongs to which group?

Tarantulas of this species are known as birdeaters, a name that goes back to an 18th-century engraving of one eating a hummingbird.

Queen Alexandra's birdwing, found only in one province of Papua New Guinea, is the largest species of which insect?

Butterfly females of this species can span more than 25 cm, dwarfing the males, and the whole population lives in about 100 square km of rainforest.

Which biblical name is carried by the largest living frog, a 3-kilogram amphibian of Cameroon's waterfalls?

Goliath frogs can slightly exceed 80 cm with their legs outstretched, and the heaviest one reliably weighed came in at 3.3 kg.

Which filter-feeding fish, with a body disc up to 7 metres across, has the largest brain of any fish?

Giant manta ray brains weigh up to 200 g, and the animal itself, the largest ray in the world, can weigh around 3,000 kg.

Which tailless, flattened giant, one of the largest bony fish, can produce up to 300 million eggs at a time?

Ocean sunfish were long misidentified as the heaviest bony fish, a title that belongs to a closely related species, Mola alexandrini.

Which fruit-eating bats include the largest bat species in the world, with wingspans reaching up to 1.7 metres?

Flying foxes find their food by sight and smell, not echolocation, and the heaviest of them, the great flying fox, weighs up to 1.6 kg.

Which structure, built by tiny coral polyps over more than 2,000 km, is the largest on Earth made by living things?

Great Barrier Reef corals number in the billions and the structure can be seen from outer space, yet it is many organisms, not one.

Thiomargarita magnifica, a single cell about a centimetre long and visible to the naked eye, is the largest known what?

Bacterium cells of this species grow as thin filaments on sunken red mangrove leaves in Guadeloupe, and some reach 2 cm long.

The coco de mer palm, which produces the largest seed in the plant kingdom, grows wild only in which island nation?

Seychelles islands Praslin and Curieuse are its only home, and a single fruit needs six to seven years to mature and can weigh up to 45 kg.

Which tropical fruit is the largest of all those that grow on trees, weighing up to 50 kilograms?

Jackfruit is the national fruit of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and it is canned and sold around the world as a meat alternative.

Which seaweed, the largest of all brown algae, can grow as much as 60 centimetres in a single day?

Giant kelp can grow more than 45 metres long, forming dense underwater forests that shelter many marine animals.

Thimmamma Marrimanu, an Indian tree whose canopy covers more than four acres, is which kind of tree?

Banyan trees are figs whose aerial roots thicken into extra trunks, which lets a single tree keep spreading outwards indefinitely.

Which plants are the largest members of the grass family, with stalks of one species reaching 46 metres long?

Bamboo is also among the fastest-growing plants on Earth, with reported growth of up to 91 cm in 24 hours.

Which organisms, giant single cells with many nuclei, can exceed 30 cm across and find the shortest path through a maze?

Slime molds such as the bright yellow Physarum polycephalum are counted among the largest living things that are not multicellular.

The Árbol del Tule, a cypress with the stoutest trunk of any tree in the world, stands in which country?

Mexico's giant grows in a churchyard in Oaxaca state, and it is so large that it was thought to be several trees until DNA tests proved it is one.

The largest fungal fruit body ever recorded, a woody growth more than 10 metres long, was found in which country?

China's Hainan island yielded the 20-year-old giant, estimated to weigh 400 to 500 kg; the previous record-holder grew in the United Kingdom.

Which extinct sea giant, among the largest predators ever, died out some 3.6 million years ago and likely hunted whales?

Megalodon means big tooth, and those thick, robust teeth were built for grabbing prey and breaking bone.

Which pterosaur, known from fossils found in Texas, is a candidate for the largest flying animal ever discovered?

Quetzalcoatlus is named after the Aztec serpent god of the sky, and recent estimates put its wingspan at around 10 to 11 metres.

Titanoboa, a 13-metre snake among the largest in the fossil record, was dug from a coal mine in which country?

Colombia's Cerrejón coal mines gave up 186 fossils of the snake, which is estimated to have weighed around 730 to 1,135 kg.

Argentinosaurus, one of the largest land animals ever at up to 35 metres long, belonged to which group of dinosaurs?

Sauropods of the titanosaur line dominated the Cretaceous; this one is known only from fragmentary remains, and estimates of its weight run from 65 to 80 tonnes.

Paraceratherium, one of the largest land mammals that ever existed, was most closely related to which living animals?

Rhinos count it among their extinct kin even though it had no horn: its name means near the hornless beast.

Gigantopithecus, an extinct ape with the largest molars of any known ape, is thought to be closest to which living apes?

Orangutans are its nearest kin, though it was once argued to belong to the human line; in life it may have weighed 200 to 300 kg.

Meganeura, a Carboniferous insect with a wingspan of about 70 cm, looked like a giant version of which living insect?

Dragonfly look-alikes of this family were predators of other insects, and the first fossils turned up in French coal deposits in 1880.

Arthropleura, the largest known land arthropod ever at over 2 metres long, was an ancient relative of which animals?

Millipedes are its nearest living kin, and the giant left fossil trackways up to 50 cm wide across Europe and North America.

Which sail-backed, semiaquatic dinosaur is among the largest known land carnivores, comparable in size to Tyrannosaurus?

Spinosaurus was first described from Egyptian bones that were destroyed in World War II, so its true shape stayed a puzzle until new finds this century.

Which marine mammal, up to 9 metres long, was hunted to extinction within 27 years of Europeans discovering it?

Steller's sea cow was a slow-moving relative of the dugong, far larger than any sirenian alive today, and adults could weigh 8 to 10 tonnes.