The animal world is beautiful with its diversity. In nature, there are specimens the size of one cell, as well as those whose dimensions inspire real awe.
Giant animals live on land, in the ocean and even in the bodies of other animals of our planet. They are different from each other, and each of them is amazing and mysterious, like any perfect creation of nature.
Introducing the top 10 longest animals in the world.
10. Anaconda - 5.2 m
Not in vain is this huge reptile called giant. This snake has a very frightening appearance, standing out among most of its relatives in the first place with its huge dimensions.
The biggest anaconda reaches a length of about 5.2 meters with a body weight of 97.5 kg.
It is interesting that in 1944, geologists looking for an oil field in the rainforests of Colombia accidentally found an anaconda whose body size reached 11 m and 43 cm. However, no conclusive evidence of this event has been provided, and since then no one has succeeded capture a snake of such large dimensions.
Once upon a time, the United States Zoological Society even promised a tidy reward to someone who finds an anaconda whose body length exceeds 12 meters.
9. Giraffe - 5.8 m
Giraffe - A very recognizable animal from the order of artiodactyls and the highest terrestrial mammal in the world, and takes 4th place in terms of body weight, losing to the elephant, hippopotamus and rhino.
The body size of large males can reach 5.8 meters, and females 5.1 meters.
8. Nematode Placentonema gigantissima - 8.5 m
Nematode Placentonema gigantissima - This is a kind of giant round helminths. Females reach a length of up to 8.5 meters. More often they parasitize in the intestines of large mammals, such as sperm whales.
This type of worm is very often found in the placenta of female sperm whales. For the first time this type of parasite was found in the Kuril Islands and was described in detail in 1951 by N. M. Gubanov.
Male nematodes are slightly inferior in length to females - 2.04-3.75 meters. The females reach a width of 15-25 mm (the anus is located about 1 m from the end of the body).
Mature eggs, within which the formed larva is located, have a size of 0.03-0.049 mm.
7. Antarctic giant squid - 10 m
This is one of the most common and largest species of squid that inhabit the Antarctic latitudes. The maximum length of this animal is at least 10 meters, and sometimes even 13-14 meters.
Quite an interesting feature Antarctic giant squid is the presence in their body of a special chemical compound - ammonium chloride, which is able to reduce the specific gravity of the body and give the squid neutral buoyancy.
This feature distinguishes them from small squids with negative buoyancy, which are constantly forced to use the too energy-intensive biological algorithm of the jet stream coming from the funnel.
6. Giant Shark - 12 m
The largest body size recorded by scientists giant shark is 12 meters. The mass of a giant shark can reach 4 tons.
Representatives of this species with a body size of less than three meters in nature are found quite infrequently. The smallest recorded giant shark reached a length of 1.7 m.
5. Whale Shark - 18 m
Whale shark - A large representative of the Rinkodont family. This is the largest species of sharks and modern fish known in our time. The largest individual known to researchers reached about 18 meters.
Whale shark can be seen in warm areas of tropical latitudes across the entire surface of the oceans. In addition, in some regions of its range, this shark is more abundant than in others.
Whale sharks are more often moved by small isolated communities, much less often alone. Sometimes, at points where there is a large amount of food, they can form numerous clusters of hundreds of individuals.
Whale sharks travel quite long distances during the migration process, chasing numerous plankton groups. One way or another, the lifestyle of this species of waterfowl, the features of its behavioral reactions and breeding to this day remain a poorly studied area for zoologists, despite the fact that recently, through the use of the latest technologies, for example, observations using satellites, have been obtained very important data on their movements.
4. Sperm whale - 25 m
Sperm whale - This is one of the largest predators on Earth. These animals have many very sharp teeth in the oral cavity. The jaw of these animals can exceed 5 m. Sperm whales themselves can have a body length of up to 20-25 meters. Their mass exceeds several tons.
By the way, in prehistoric times, sperm whales were even larger, but during the evolution of these predators became much smaller. Sperm whale is listed in the Red Book of Russia.
3. Blue whale - 33 m
This animal is also known as minke whale. He is the largest whale, the largest mammal to date. Its average length is approximately 33 meters and its weight can exceed 150 tons.
Since the beginning of the last century, the population blue whale began to decline rapidly due to barbaric fishing. First of all, the hunters for blue whales were interested in the incredible size of this mammal - from one such whale one could get much more useful raw materials than from other representatives of the cetaceans.
Because of this, by the 60s, the blue whale was on the verge of almost complete extermination - then about 5,000 individuals remained alive.
Now, despite the active measures taken to protect this rare animal, the blue whale is still considered a very rare inhabitant of the deep sea - the total number of individuals does not exceed 10,000. Therefore, to support its population, it is necessary to carry out all new activities aimed at protecting it.
2. Jellyfish "mane of a lion" - 37 m
The largest known hairy jellyfish known to science, which is called the “lion’s mane,” was washed ashore in the Gulf of Massachusetts in 1870. The size of her body was 230 centimeters, and the length of the tentacles was 37 meters, which exceeds the size of the body of blue whales.
This jellyfish is the largest type of jellyfish, which are classified as stinging and scyphoid. It got its original name due to the many tangled tentacles, which externally have an expressive resemblance to the mane of a lion.
Jellyfish "mane of a lion" - a rather long creature and many inhabitants of the deep sea, for example, shrimp and plankton can live in its hairy part, which provides themselves with protection from external threats and regular nutrition.
Interestingthat Arthur Conan Doyle himself dedicated one of his works to the animal about the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes.
1. Tape Worm - 55 m
This huge parasite worm lives in the intestines of gray whales and sperm whales. Other name tapeworms – chained. One such representative of the fauna extracted from the intestines of the sperm whale had a body size of 30 meters, that is, it was longer than its own host.
The longest representative of this species is the so-called lineus longissimus. Thrown out by a storm in 1864 to the shores of Scotland, the worm spread with its body to a distance of 55 meters, while it had a diameter of 1 cm.