5 BIGGEST Creatures on Earth!

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Colossal squid. The elusive colossal squid lives at depths of 1,000 ft or more and is very rarely seen. It is believed to be the largest squid species and is the only recognized member of its genus. So, what's the difference between a giant squid and a colossal squid?

[00:00:16]Giant squids have arms and tentacles with suckers lined with small teeth, while colossals have sharp swiveling hooks. We knew about them from stories and legends and it is most likely the animal that inspired the mythical kraken. Whales would be spotted with enormous marks from something that had grabbed onto them and sometimes even legs attached to them indicating the size of the enormous creature. Since it is so secretive, experts have a lot to learn about the creature. Until 2004, researchers only ever had dead specimens to learn from. That year, Japanese scientists photographed a live giant squid for the first time ever following years of failed attempts at catching a glimpse of the creature in its natural habitat. Researchers then captured the first ever video footage of the giant squid in 2013 and to this day, sightings of live specimens remain few and far between. Last year, a research team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration filmed the first footage of one in US waters off the Gulf of Mexico, 2,500 ft below the water surface. The largest squid ever discovered measured 43 ft long and weighed as much as a ton according to scientific estimates. While the creature's main body isn't impressively massive on its own, the squid's eight arms and two feeder tentacles effectively convey its sheer size. It also has three hearts, a beak that can rip flesh and the largest eye in the animal kingdom measuring about 10 in in diameter or about the size of a dinner plate. So, did this squid attack ships and drag them underwater like the legendary kraken? It is very hard to say as squids in general are reportedly gentle giants and not really dangerous to humans. It is their size and mysterious nature that makes us wonder about one of the most impressive creatures of the deep. Colossal and giant squids have washed up on shore several times, most notably in Spain in 2013 and in 2018 off the coast of New Zealand. Zulu the giraffe. With 6-ft long legs that are taller than many humans, giraffes are the world's tallest mammals. They typically grow between 14 and 19 ft tall and weigh between 1,750 and 2,800 lb. Their height comes in handy when it comes to feeding, as well as keeping an eye out for predators on the horizon. Besides being large, giraffes are impressively fast with a short-distance running speed of up to 35 mph and a long-distance pace of 10 mph.

[00:02:33]This enables the gentle herbivores to travel miles in search of food, ensuring that they meet their weekly intake of a hundreds of pounds of leaves. In early 2016, an 18-year-old male giraffe at Folly Farm Zoo in Pembrokeshire, Wales, made news headlines as possibly the tallest known giraffe. At over 19 ft tall, Zulu towers over giraffes of average height by about 4 ft. While there's no accurate way to measure him, his head just fits underneath his enclosure's 20-ft doors. Zulu weighs 1.4 tons and eats a combined 51 lb of hard feed and alfalfa hay daily. He hasn't let his imposing build go to his head, however. Zulu is just as well known for his gentle personality as he is for his size. Mystery sea creature. Halfway through 2017, a nightmarish, unrecognizable sea creature washed ashore on an Indonesian beach. Images of the floating, deflated-looking 50-ft long carcass, that's almost four Volkswagen Beetles lined up, which appeared to have tentacle-like protrusions went viral as people around the world tried guessing what the animal was. To the disappointment of armchair cryptozoologists, George Leonard, chief scientist at the Ocean Conservancy, concluded that the bizarre creature was probably a baleen whale. As the carcass rotted, it became unnaturally bloated by decomposition gases, resulting in the whale's deformed shape. Altogether, there are four baleen whale families encompassing 14 species, including the planet's largest animal ever. Out of all the baleen species, the fin whale ranks second to the blue whale in terms of size, reaching up to 89 ft long. As a comparison, humpback whales grow between 45 and 50 ft long. As a general rule, for each foot of length, baleen whales weigh 1 ton. So, based on their big size, they are about the weight of a space shuttle. Nicknamed the gentle giants of the ocean, they are well known for both their large size and their peaceful demeanor. They don't have teeth and primarily feed on zooplankton, krill, and small fish. Southern elephant seals. The southern elephant seal is the world's largest living carnivoran, not to be confused with the term carnivore, which applies to all meat-eating creatures. Carnivorans are members of the diverse Carnivora order of placental mammals, which consists of 280 species.

[00:04:47]They dwell within the southern hemisphere's polar and subpolar waters, and spend most of their time at sea, only traveling to shore to mate or molt.

[00:04:55]Males typically weigh between 4,900 and 8,800 lb, and are between 15 and 19 ft long. They are five to six times larger than females, who average between 880 and 2,000 lb, and measure from 8 and 1/2 to 9.8 ft long. This is one of the animal kingdom's most extreme displays of sexual dimorphism, which is a distinct difference in size or appearance between the sexes of an animal. The largest recorded southern elephant seal was a 22 and 1/2 ft long 11,000 lb bull, who was hunted on February 28th, 1913 in Possession Bay of South Georgia Island in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. In the past, southern elephant seals were overhunted for their blubber, and the species became threatened. The population recovered and is stable, but like many other animals, the seals face a new potential threat in the form of climate change, and the future is uncertain for these marine giants. Last November, an exhausted young southern elephant seal was spotted off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. It was the species' first recorded visit to the country's waters, and while the seal disappeared after several days, and hopefully headed back south, stopovers in tropical places are extremely rare and unnatural for southern elephant seals, and are at least slightly concerning. About a month earlier, a female named Zelda appeared on South Africa's Port Elizabeth coastline and gave birth to a pup, Ziggy. Before then, seals had only delivered pups on the South African coast three times, and not since 1950. Zelda and Ziggy's rescuers don't know why Zelda traveled to South Africa, but they suspect she could have gotten lost, and also mentioned climate change as a possible factor. For the next 3 weeks, Ziggy nursed on his mother's milk, which is roughly 50% fat, and tripled in size. Then, Zelda reentered the ocean and began her trek back to Antarctica, as it was time for Ziggy to fend for himself. The blue whale.

[00:06:46]The blue whale is the largest known animal alive today, and to ever exist, period. It grows up to 100 ft long and weighs as much as 150 tons. The longest blue whale ever measured was 111 ft long, roughly the equivalent of three school buses parked bumper to bumper. In 2006, a farmer in Italy discovered the fossilized remains of an 85-ft long ancient blue whale that existed about 1 and 1/2 million years ago during the early Pleistocene. It's the largest known whale fossil on record, and proves that blue whales existed much earlier than we once thought. The fossil's age also suggests that blue whales evolved to their current size much more slowly than previously believed. Thanks to whale hunters heavily targeting larger specimens, and nearly hunting the species to extinction, most blue whales nowadays only reach a length of 80 ft, according to author Jean-Marie Bauhaus.

[00:07:39]In 2015, a 78-ft long blue whale washed ashore on Oregon's Ophir Beach, an incredibly rare occurrence in the region. Blue whales are gargantuan from the moment they enter the world. Newborn calves are about 25-ft long and drink up to 100 gallons of milk daily. Scientists have struggled to explain how blue whales became so big. One prevailing theory is that blue whales are so huge because they have plenty of room throughout the world's oceans to swim and grow, and because they rely on buoyancy rather than their skeletons to support the weight of their bodies.

[00:08:11]Despite their size, blue whales are generally considered harmless to humans.

[00:08:14]They're filter feeders whose diet consists almost entirely of tiny shrimp-like crustaceans called krill, which they eat by the thousands.

[00:08:22]Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, and let me know your favorite animal in the comments below. See you next time. Bye.