Animals
A member of the order Cetacea, the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is believed to be the largest animal ever to have lived. The maximum recorded weight was 190 tonnes for a specimen measuring 30 m (98 ft), while longer ones, up to 33.4 m (110 ft), have been recorded but not weighed.
The African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), of the order Proboscidea, is the largest living land animal. A native of various open habitats in sub-Saharan Africa, this elephant is born commonly weighing about 100 kg (220 lb). The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1974. It was a male measuring 10.7 m (35 ft) from trunk to tail and 4.2 m (13.7 ft) lying on its side in a projected line from the highest point of the shoulder to the base of the forefoot, indicating a standing shoulder height of 4.0 m (13 ft).
- Table of heaviest living animals
The following is a list of the heaviest living animals, which are all cetaceans. These whales also qualify as the largest living mammals. Since no scale can accommodate the body of a large whale, most whales have been weighed by parts.
| Rank | Animal | Average mass |
Maximum mass |
Average total length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blue whale | 110 | 190 | 25.5 (84) |
| 2 | North Pacific right whale | 60 | 120 | 15.5 (51) |
| 3 | Southern right whale | 58 | 110 | 15.25 (50) |
| 4 | Fin whale | 57 | 120 | 19.5 (64.3) |
| 5 | North Atlantic right whale | 55 | 100 | 15 (49) |
| 6 | Bowhead whale | 54.5 | 120 | 15 (49) |
| 7 | Sperm whale | 31.25 | 57 | 13.25 (43.5) |
| 8 | Humpback whale | 29 | 48 | 13.5 (44) |
| 9 | Sei whale | 22.5 | 45 | 14.8 (49) |
| 10 | Gray whale | 19.5 | 45 | 13.5 (44) |
- Table of heaviest terrestrial animals
The following is a list of the heaviest wild land animals, which are all mammals. The African elephant is now listed as two species, the African bush elephant and the African forest elephant, as they are generally considered to be two separate species now.
| Rank | Animal | Average mass |
Maximum mass |
Average total length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | African bush elephant | 4.9 | 12.7 | 6 (18): Height* |
| 2 | Asian elephant | 4.15 | 8.0 | 6.8 (22) |
| 3 | African forest elephant | 2.8 | 6.0 | 6.2 (20) |
| 4 | White rhinoceros | 2.1 | 4.5 | 4.4 (14.5) |
| 5 | Indian rhinoceros | 1.9 | 4.0 | 4.2 (13.9) |
| 6 | Hippopotamus | 1.8 | 4.5 | 4 (13.2) |
| 7 | Javan rhinoceros | 1.715 | 2.3 | 3.8 (12.5) |
| 8 | Black rhinoceros | 1.1 | 2.9 | 4 (13.2) |
| 9 | Giraffe | 1.0 | 2 | 5.15 (16.9) |
| 10 | Gaur | 0.95 | 1.5 | 3.8 (12.5) |
Read more about this topic: Largest Organisms
Famous quotes containing the word animals:
“What distinguished man from animals was the human capacity for symbolic thought, the capacity which was inseparable from the development of language in which words were not mere signals, but signifiers of something other than themselves. Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Feet are considered a delicacy among certain animals, you know.... In fact, there are certain man-eating animals who will eat only the feet, leave everything else, will not touch one other thing.”
—Blake Edwards (b. 1922)
“Of all the animals with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercised more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means which she affords to the relieving these necessities.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)