Giants (11 photos)

The Largest Animals on Earth

The Largest Insect: Titan Beetle (Titanus giganteus)





• Weight: 100 g • Length: 16.7 cm Titan beetles are sometimes mistaken for cockroaches, but these huge South American insects are a separate species. They have strong jaws that can bite through a pencil, and sharp claws that the beetles use for defensive purposes. No one knows what their larvae look like, because they have never been seen.

Largest Arthropod: Japanese Spider Crab (Macrocheira kaempferi)



• Weight: 19 kg • Length: 3.8 m. The family Arthropoda includes lobsters and crabs, spiders, scorpions, insects, and other creatures with articulated exoskeletons. The largest recorded arthropod is the Japanese spider crab, caught in 1921

Largest Lizard: Komodo Dragon (Varanus komodoensis)





• Weight: 91 kg • Length: 3 m. The largest lizard on Earth is the Komodo dragon. This is a dangerous animal. Females are generally smaller than males and usually reach no more than 1.8 m in length, which is about the same size as the average man. These lizards hunt large prey such as water buffalo, pigs and deer, and have even been known to eat humans.

Largest Snake: Giant Anaconda (Eunectes murinus)



• Weight: 250 kg • Length: 9.1 m. By total weight, the largest snake in the world is the giant anaconda. The snake is longer than a London double-decker bus and very wide in the middle, giving it the ability to swallow all kinds of prey, including deer-sized mammals, fish, alligators, birds and even humans.

Largest rodent: Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris)



• Weight: 65 kg • Length: 1.4 m. The capybara looks like a giant guinea pig. They live in herds of up to 40 animals. Males and females are about the same size.

Largest Amphibian: Chinese Giant Salamander (Andrias davidianus



• Weight: 70 kg • Length: 1.8 m. The Chinese giant salamander lives underwater its entire life, but it does not have gills. Instead, it absorbs oxygen through its skin. This strange creature often reaches the size of many adult humans. During breeding, females lay up to 500 eggs, and males care for them until the young hatch

Largest Bird: Ostrich (Struthio camelus)



• Weight: 157 kg • Length: 2.74 m. Male ostriches can grow up to 3 meters tall and weigh up to 157 kg. Females are generally smaller.

Largest reptile: Saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus)



• Weight: 1075 kg • Length: 6.1 m. Male saltwater crocodiles are very large, about twice the size of grizzly bears. Females are much smaller, rarely reaching more than 3 m in length.

Largest Animal Ever: Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus)



Blue whales are larger than any dinosaur that ever lived, and much larger than the largest living land animal on the planet. An adult blue whale is larger than three prehistoric Triceratops. It is the largest mammal on Earth. Other whale species come close in size. • Weight: 150,000 kg • Length: 25 m.

The largest land animal: African elephant (Loxodonta Africana)



• Weight: 11,000 kg • Height: 4.2 m • Length: 6-7 m. The largest African elephant was shot in Angola in 1956. It weighed 11,000 kg and reached 4 meters in height.

The largest representative bovids-Gaur



The body length of the gaur reaches more than three meters. The height at the shoulders reaches 2.3 m, and its weight can reach 1500 kg, in some cases up to 2000 kg. A normal adult male weighs about 1300 kg. The fur is brown, with shades from reddish to black. The horns are on average 90 cm long and curved upward in the shape of a crescent.