10 of the Largest Living Things on Earth

What’s the biggest living thing on Earth? Ask a kid and you’ll hear “blue whale.” Ask a forester and you might get a tree. Ask a mycologist and you’ll get a grin and a story about a mushroom in Oregon. They’re all right, depending on what you mean by “biggest.”

That’s the fun of ranking the largest living things on Earth: size can mean height, length, weight, volume, or the sheer area an organism covers. Below, we count down ten record-breakers, starting with a giant flower and building to life forms so vast you could walk right through them without noticing. For each one, we’ll spell out exactly which measurement earns it a spot.

10Rafflesia arnoldii, the Biggest Single Flower

Imagine a fleshy, brick-red flower nearly a meter wide, spotted with pale warts and smelling like a carcass on a hot afternoon. Rafflesia arnoldii produces the largest single flower known, with blooms up to about 1 meter (3 feet) across and weighing up to roughly 11 kilograms (24 pounds).

It’s also one of the strangest plants on Earth. Rafflesia has no leaves, no stems, and no true roots. It lives as a parasite inside the tissue of Tetrastigma vines in the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo, drawing its water and nutrients from its host and staying hidden until a cabbage-like bud bursts through the vine’s bark. That bud takes many months to develop, and the open flower lasts only about a week. The rotting-meat stench is bait for carrion flies, which carry pollen from flower to flower.

Western science learned of it after an 1818 expedition in Sumatra involving British colonial official Stamford Raffles and naturalist Joseph Arnold, who died of fever soon afterward. Today, many Rafflesia species are threatened by forest loss. Its rival for “biggest bloom,” the titan arum, can tower about 3 meters tall, but that’s technically a cluster of many tiny flowers, not a single one.

9The African Bush Elephant, King of the Land

Walk into the rotunda of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and you’ll meet a giant: a mounted African bush elephant bull standing about 4 meters (13 feet) at the shoulder. Known as the Fénykövi elephant, after the Hungarian hunter who shot it in Angola in 1955, it has greeted visitors since 1959 and shows just how big the largest land animal alive can get.

A typical adult bull weighs around 6 metric tons and stands over 3 meters (10 feet) at the shoulder, and a few exceptional males have been estimated at about 10 tonnes. Fueling that body is a full-time job. Elephants spend most of their waking hours eating, putting away well over 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of grass, leaves, bark, and fruit a day. Their enormous ears work like radiators, pumping blood through thin skin to shed heat on the savanna.

Everything about their lives runs large. Pregnancy lasts about 22 months, the longest of any land mammal, and newborn calves can weigh around 100 kilograms (220 pounds). Elephants also communicate with deep rumbles, some below the range of human hearing, that can carry for kilometers.

8The Whale Shark, the Largest Fish Alive

The largest fish on the planet can rival a school bus in length, and it spends its days sipping plankton soup. Adult whale sharks often measure around 10 meters (33 feet), with the biggest reports reaching roughly 18 meters (60 feet), yet they feed mainly on plankton, fish eggs, and small fish.

Despite the name, the whale shark is a true shark, not a whale. It cruises warm oceans with its mouth agape, a gape that can open more than a meter wide, filtering seawater through spongy pads in its gills that trap prey. It has hundreds of rows of tiny teeth, but they play little role in eating. Usually solitary, whale sharks gather at predictable hotspots when food booms, such as Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia, Isla Holbox in Mexico, and Donsol in the Philippines.

Each whale shark’s pattern of pale spots is unique, like a fingerprint. Researchers identify individuals from diver and tourist photos using software adapted from an algorithm astronomers developed to match star patterns, building a global catalog of sightings. The species is listed as endangered by the IUCN, threatened by fishing, bycatch, and ship strikes, so the best way to meet one is on a regulated, responsible swim tour.

7The Lion’s Mane Jellyfish, Longer Than a Blue Whale

In 1870, a lion’s mane jellyfish washed ashore in Massachusetts Bay with a bell about 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) wide and tentacles reported at roughly 37 meters (120 feet) long. If that measurement is accurate, the animal was longer than the longest blue whale ever recorded, making the species a contender for the longest animal ever measured.

Most lion’s manes are far smaller, but even ordinary specimens trail long, flowing tentacles, hundreds of them, arranged in eight clusters beneath a shaggy, reddish-gold bell that inspired the name. The species, Cyanea capillata, lives in the cold waters of the Arctic, the North Atlantic, and the North Pacific, and the largest individuals tend to turn up in the colder parts of its range.

Those tentacles are loaded with stinging cells. A brush with one is painful, though rarely dangerous for healthy adults, and even beached or broken-off tentacles can still sting, so look but don’t touch. The jellyfish’s most famous literary role came in 1926, when Arthur Conan Doyle cast it as the culprit in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane,” a mystery solved only when Holmes realizes the killer isn’t human at all.

6The Blue Whale, the Largest Animal Ever Known

Dinosaurs get the glory, but the biggest animal in Earth’s history is very likely alive right now. Blue whales can grow to around 30 meters (98 feet) long and weigh well over 150 tonnes, heavier than any dinosaur known from reliable fossils, and they swim in every major ocean today.

Everything about them comes supersized. A blue whale’s heart can weigh around 180 kilograms (400 pounds), and its tongue alone can weigh about as much as an elephant. Yet this colossus feeds almost entirely on krill, shrimp-like animals a few centimeters long. Lunging into a dense swarm, it gulps a mouthful of water and prey that can rival its own body weight, then strains the water out through its baleen plates. A 2021 study estimated that a blue whale can eat around 16 metric tons of krill a day during peak feeding season.

Their voices match their size. Blue whale calls are extremely loud and so low that much of the sound sits near or below the limit of human hearing, traveling hundreds of kilometers through the ocean. Twentieth-century whaling killed hundreds of thousands of blue whales and pushed them toward extinction. Protected since 1966, they’re slowly recovering but are still listed as endangered.

5Hyperion, the Tallest Known Tree

In August 2006, naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor were bushwhacking through a remote valley in California’s Redwood National Park when they found a coast redwood that would rewrite the record books. Named Hyperion, after a Titan of Greek mythology, it measured about 115.9 meters (380 feet), the tallest known living tree on Earth.

That’s taller than the Statue of Liberty from the ground to the tip of the torch, with plenty of room to spare. Coast redwoods reach such heights thanks to the mild, foggy climate of the northern California coast. Fog and moisture absorbed through their needles help them cope with the enormous challenge of lifting water more than a hundred meters against gravity. Scientists think those water-transport limits keep redwoods from growing much beyond roughly 120 to 130 meters, so Hyperion is brushing up against the theoretical ceiling.

Its exact location was never officially published, but enthusiasts shared coordinates online, and visitors began trampling the fragile, shallow-rooted ground around it. In 2022 the National Park Service closed the area, warning that anyone who enters could face a fine of up to $5,000 and six months in jail. Want to stand among giants legally? The park’s established groves, like Lady Bird Johnson Grove, are spectacular.

4General Sherman, the Biggest Tree by Volume

General Sherman isn’t the tallest tree, the widest tree, or the oldest tree. It’s simply the biggest. This giant sequoia in California’s Sequoia National Park is the largest known single-stem tree on Earth by volume, with a trunk containing an estimated 1,487 cubic meters (52,500 cubic feet) of wood.

That’s enough to fill more than half an Olympic swimming pool. The tree stands about 84 meters (275 feet) tall, its base measures roughly 31 meters (over 100 feet) around, and its age is estimated at roughly 2,300 to 2,700 years. Giant sequoias owe part of their success to fire. Their thick, spongy bark resists flames, and heat helps their cones open and drop seeds onto freshly cleared soil.

The tree’s name has a twisty history. According to the official account, naturalist James Wolverton named it after Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman in 1879. In 1886, members of the utopian socialist Kaweah Colony renamed it the “Karl Marx” tree, but the colony dissolved and the old name returned. In September 2021, as the KNP Complex Fire approached, firefighters wrapped General Sherman’s base in fire-resistant foil blankets, and the giant survived.

3Pando, the Forest That’s One Tree

Walk through a certain grove of quaking aspen in central Utah and you’ll see tens of thousands of white trunks, their leaves fluttering and turning gold in autumn. You’ll also be standing inside one living thing. Every stem in this grove of about 43 hectares (106 acres) grows from the same root system and shares the same genes. Its name is Pando, Latin for “I spread.”

Aspens often reproduce by sending up new shoots, called suckers, from their roots, so a single seedling can grow into a sprawling clone over centuries or millennia. Pando, in Fishlake National Forest, is the most impressive known example, with around 47,000 stems. Its total weight is commonly estimated at about 6,000 metric tons (13 million pounds), making it the heaviest known organism on Earth. Its age is debated: a 2024 genetic study estimated it could be somewhere between 16,000 and 80,000 years old, though individual trunks typically live only about a century.

Pando is struggling, though. Mule deer and elk browse new shoots before they can mature, so parts of the clone aren’t replacing aging trunks. Land managers have fenced sections to keep grazers out, and protected areas are regrowing. Utah State Route 25 runs right through it near Fish Lake, and early fall colors are spectacular.

2Posidonia australis, the Largest Plant on Earth

In 2022, scientists studying seagrass in Shark Bay, Western Australia, expected to find a patchwork of many different plants. Instead, their genetic tests kept turning up the same individual. The meadow of ribbon weed, Posidonia australis, they had sampled was largely one plant that had spread across some 180 kilometers (112 miles) of the bay.

The clone covers roughly 200 square kilometers (77 square miles), an area bigger than Washington, D.C., and Guinness World Records now lists it as the largest plant by area. The research team, including lead author Jane Edgeloe and Elizabeth Sinclair of the University of Western Australia, estimated it has been growing for at least 4,500 years. It expands by sending out underground stems called rhizomes that sprout new shoots, a strategy that lets it spread without seeds.

The plant has another unusual trick. It’s polyploid, carrying twice the usual number of chromosomes, which may help it tolerate Shark Bay’s wide swings in temperature, light, and salinity. That resilience has limits; a marine heat wave in 2010 and 2011 damaged large stretches of the bay’s seagrass. Shark Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Malgana Country, depends on these meadows to shelter dugongs, turtles, and fish.

1Oregon’s “Humongous Fungus,” Nearly 4 Square Miles Wide

From above, the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon look like ordinary conifer forest, broken here and there by patches of dead and dying trees. Those patches are clues. Beneath the soil of Malheur National Forest lives a single individual of the honey fungus Armillaria ostoyae that spreads across roughly 965 hectares (2,385 acres), about 3.7 square miles. It’s often called the largest living organism in the world, and it’s the largest known fungus.

Researchers confirmed its size around the turn of the millennium by sampling fungus from trees across the area and comparing DNA, finding the same genetic individual again and again. Most of it is invisible: a network of thread-like filaments and tough black cords called rhizomorphs, nicknamed “shoestrings,” that tunnel through soil and under bark. Those cords let the fungus creep from tree to tree, killing conifers by rotting their roots. In autumn, clusters of honey mushrooms pop up at the base of infected trees, the only part most people ever notice.

Its age is estimated at somewhere between 2,400 and 8,650 years, based on its growth rate. The seagrass at number two covers more ground, but this is a single predator threaded through the roots of a living forest, slowly eating it. Hikers can cross it without ever knowing.

Big Depends on How You Measure

Line these giants up and a pattern emerges: the truly enormous organisms tend to be the ones we barely notice. A whale is obvious. A clone of aspen, a meadow of seagrass, or a fungus woven through forest soil hides in plain sight, quietly growing for thousands of years. Height, weight, volume, and area each crown a different champion, and new genetic tools keep revealing contenders.

Hungry for more of nature’s overachievers? Check out these animals with real-life superpowers, or dive into the strange world of deep-sea creatures that look like aliens.

Quick answers

What is the largest living organism on Earth?

It depends on the measure. By area, a Posidonia australis seagrass in Shark Bay, Australia, covers about 200 square kilometers. Oregon’s Armillaria ostoyae fungus spans about 965 hectares and is often called the largest organism on land. By weight, Pando, a Utah aspen clone estimated at about 6,000 tonnes, is considered the heaviest known organism.

What is the largest animal that has ever lived?

The blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever lived. It can reach about 30 meters (98 feet) long and weigh well over 150 tonnes, outweighing even the biggest dinosaurs known from reliable fossils. A 2023 claim that an ancient whale, Perucetus colossus, was heavier was later revised downward by other researchers.

What is the tallest tree in the world?

The tallest known living tree is Hyperion, a coast redwood in California’s Redwood National Park, measured at about 116 meters (380 feet) after its discovery in 2006. The area around it is closed to visitors to protect the fragile forest floor, and entering can bring a fine of up to $5,000 and six months in jail.