Talk:Largest organisms

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Correct errors

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The article Heaviest land animals was nominated for deletion. The debate was closed on 2007-09-07 with a consensus to merge the content into Largest organisms. If the merger is not completed promptly, Heaviest land animals might be re-nominated for deletion.

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Contents

[edit] Ant and Company

As the largest member of the Wasp family, you wrote the Sepsis as being the largest, when, in fact, the giant hornet is much larger than the Pepsis Wasp. Please correct this mistake immediately.


[edit] largest Proboscid?

The largest living land animal issue is all over the place. The article for Mammuthus sungari proports to be it, while Paraceratherium proudly decalres it, in frank terms, "(Paraceratherium) is teh largest mammal known." Then, on the actual largest mamals list, the Imperial Mammoth and Deinotherium are both given as the largest, together.

Will the real largest Proboscid please stand up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.177.239.225 (talk) 08:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] largest dinosaur

I remember reading, many moons ago, that structural engineers had calculated the maximum mass possible for a land animal is 120 metric tonnes. Has this been disproved?

I think it's easily disprovable for anyone who takes a moment to think about it. Living organisms have a habit of getting around almost any limit one can think of, and while there might be a structural upper-limit for vertebrates, arthropods, etc., that doesn't take into account that organisms could evolve stronger support materials, or that an animal could (hypothetically) evolve to a tremendous size at the cost of mobility and adapt to a plant- or fungus-like lifestyle. There's also a critter out there, though the name escapes me, that evolved from human cervical carsonoma (sp?) cell culture and began infesting other cell cultures not unlike a virus or bacterium; essentially, this organism is a single-celled human. Now imagine if it evolved the way of the slime-molds, and could form multi-celled, though structurally homogenous, humans. There would theoretically be no upper-limit for size. You could end up with a giant, gellatenous human spanning hundreds of acres of land and weighing thousands of tons. Who's to say some random mutation in some discarded but living tissue from a dinosaur couldn't do the same? Anything's possible, though whether or not it actually happens is a whole other story. --Corvun 05:32, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
Interesting, but I was talking about sauropod dinosaurs. I think that the engineers said that beyond a certain mass (about 120 000 kg) the legs of a quadruped would be so massive that they could not fit under the body. If the creature has a sprawling gait, the limbs would have be more massive still. Either way, any freak mutation like this would probably not survive childhood.
However, the maximum proposed mass for Bruhathkayosaurus is 220 tons- have other engineers upped the estimate?
Stratoposiden is a German Sauropod whose bones were destroyed in World War II, it was thought to be upwards of 44 meters long, described by the famous Edward Drinker Cope —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SuperCroc (talk • contribs) 13:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] largest reptile?

Pythons have been known to reach 20+ feet (record is something like 23 feet). That certainly deserves at least a mention...

Does anyone know what the scientific consencus is?

[edit] Great stuff

This is shaping up into a very nice article in double quick time. Congrats to Violet and the other contributors. Pcb21| Pete 10:57, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! It's growing like, umm, a honey fungus! violet/riga (t) 15:17, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Honey fungus

That honey fungus is NOT proven to be a single organism, that's not how fungi grow and develop. It will be a cluster of genetically identical clones derived from a single organism, but no longer all connected as a single individual. - MPF 15:00, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be many sources that say it is:
violet/riga (t) 15:15, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, bad journalism and hype. To prove it is a single organism, they would have to excavate the entire area, and demonstrate that every part is all inter-connected with living tissue. All they've done is demonstrate that different parts of the colony are clonally identical. That isn't the same as proving it is a single, fully connected individual. - MPF 15:21, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Quite possible, but such claims should be noted in the article along with the reasoning behind it. It might be one individual, it's just not proven, and we should make that clear in the article. Explicitly stating that "The General Sherman tree is the largest living organism" is a dangerous thing. violet/riga (t) 15:25, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
It might is rather stretching possibilities - it is highly improbable that it is all interconnected; fungi just don't grow like that, as they don't have long-term perennial living parts. As the front edge of the mycelium grows, the older portions die out, leaving the sections unconnected. Mycelium encountering other mycelium from the same origin can re-join onto itself, so interconnecting (strictly, reconnecting) can occur, but the probability of it involving the whole area is absolutely minuscule. - MPF 15:37, 20 August 2005 (UTC)


Just curious, wasn't that giant fungus in MI supposed to be the largest in the world?

[edit] How far are we going to go??

With the largest example of each order of mammals cited, are we also going to list e.g. the largest example of each order of plants? (53 orders of flowering plants alone, not counting conifers, ferns, mosses, etc . . ) Insects?? (30 orders) Fishes? The Largest "Smallest Thing"?? Methinks this is getting a bit too large! - MPF 15:37, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

If we could present that in a concise list then it wouldn't be too bad. Having a summary for each type and then a broken-down list of orders might work. I also briefly thought about having "the largest pet cat" (etc.), but that would be too Guinness Book / pop culture. violet/riga (t) 15:42, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
What about a subarticle: Largest mammal species? Neutralitytalk 15:53, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
That could work, with this article being a summary of all of the subarticles and of the largest organisms in general. Would be a good featured topic! violet/riga (t) 15:55, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree with violet... Idleguy 07:48, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Whale comparison

Nice as it is, the whale comparison diagram is clearly a copyvio and should be deleted forthwith. Soo 10:41, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Largest lagomorph

I've no idea what's been documented, but jack rabbits get to be pretty huge, especially in the American Southwest. I've seen some that looked as big as springer spaniels (around 30 lbs, give or take) — to see a jack rabbit sitting with it's ears laid down, one might, at first glance, mistake it for a dog. I don't know if any lagomorphs get bigger than this, but it's something to look into. --Corvun 06:52, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Monotreme

In living animals section, the largest monotreme is listed as an extinct echidna. An extinct animal is not living.

Since nobody addressed this, I took the liberty of removing the monotreme section because it was really bugging me. I'll try to find the largest extant monotreme and put it back in.Alex Klotz 17:14, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bloop ?

I think this is a little too speculative to keep in the opening paragraph. - SimonLyall 07:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Flying Things

Added a bit about the largest birds that could fly, even if they're extinct. Having the largest bird alive today that can fly would be good.

[edit] Revisit decision to exclude Armillaria ostoyae

I'd like to revisit the decision not to list the Armillaria ostoyae in Oregon as the largest organism in the world.

As shown in the Talk page above, there are numerous secondary sources that list it as the largest organism in the world. The points that MPF bring up would be considered original research under WP rules, yes? .. and therefore, we should not override the secondary sources.

Are there primary or secondary sources that deprecate the Oregon fungus and list the General Sherman tree instead? The reference to the U.S. National Park Service lists it as the largest tree, not the largest organism.

Thanks! hike395 04:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use image removal

I replaced Image:Jurassic Park screenshot 2.jpg as it's a screenshot and therefore only appropriate for "critical commentary and discussion of the cinema and television" (WP:FU). Ziggurat 02:28, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Largest protozoan

I think that Xenophyophores would count as considerably larger than forams, as stated. -- Liam Proven 12:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Largest bony fish

MADEA IZ FUNNYY

On the to-do list it says the largest bony fish is the giant grouper. Shouldn't this be the ocean sunfish? Jerkov 12:01, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I've edited it. Dora Nichov 08:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Largest crocodile

The largest authenticated crocodiles were only about 6m and a bit over 1000kg in weight, there is NO physical evidence of any 8m specimens. This should be edited and the largest authenticated crocodile taken as record.

[edit] Liopleurodon was not the largest pliosaur

Liopleurodon was (despite the BBC-Documentation which used false estimations) not the largest plesiosaur. Fossils of a still undescribed species whose holotype was discovered some years ago in Aramberri was still larger and reached in contrast to Liopleurodon actually lengths of more than 20m.

Walking With Dinosaurs DOES have some evidence. They deduced that the fossil which you described belonged to Liopleurodon. And they've found six-meter long animals bittenn in half by some sort of giant predator. But you're right that they have no evidence that it actually belongs to Liopleurodon. Dora Nichov 08:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

No, at this time the Monster of Aramberri was still unknown. They just estimated (on relics which didn´t belong to Liopleurodon at all) how large the largest ever living liopleurodon probably was, and came to the widespread 25m.

[edit] Cymbospondylus was not the largest ichthyosaur

Cymbospondylus reached only lengths of about 10m, but Shonisaurus was about 15m, but there were even much larger ichthyosaurs, a recent find from Canada belonged to a 23m long ichthyosaur and isolated vertebras were found which belonged to ichthyosaurs of nearly 30m.

[edit] Largest carnivore

Why is this listed as an elephant seal and not the sperm whale, which reaches 3 times that length and 10 times the weight? --70.70.143.237 15:34, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The term "carnivore" doesn´t only mean meat-eating animals in general, but the family of carnivores to which for example cats, dogs, martens or in this case seals belong. Sperm whales are carnivorous but they don´t belong to the true carnivores.

True. If pennipeds belong in the order Carnivora (this is controversal), then the elephant seal is the biggest. If not, the polar bear is. If we're not referring to the "carnivore" in classification systems, then the sperm whale certainly IS the biggest alive. (But it's certainly referring to the order Carnivora in this article). Dora Nichov 08:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to be clear, Blue whales are carnivores too (krill are animals, after all). So they're the biggest carnivores ever, not Sperm Whales. No edit is needed, though, as others have pointed out. - Atarr 23:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Correct. But sperm whales are the biggest supercarnivores (a carnivore that eats red meat/fish/non-small invertebrates in general for 90% of its diet) ever. Dora Nichov 12:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

That's not what "supercarnivore" means - supercarnivore is synonymous with apex predator, i.e. anything at the top of the food chain. Nothing preys on adult Blue Whales, so they are at the top of the food chain, so they are just as much of a superpredator as sperm whales. There's no distinction between eating shrimp and eating sardines... - Atarr 14:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Close, but the apex term is superPREDATOR, I think... Dora Nichov 03:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Many things

First of all why are dinosaurs in the catagory with reptiles? Most recent evidence sugests they are closer to birds why not clasify them on their own.

Sharks, there used to be HUGE sharks where is that on this page?

Arthropods (Arthropoda) there used to be 6 foot long plant eating things in this catogory!

Not to nit pick but I'm puting tags on this page, sorry, to who ever put the time in, but your wrong. John Doe or Jane Doe 11:27, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

phylogenetically speaking, dinosaurs are reptiles, as are birds (that is, birds are also a subset of reptilia). Everything else you've mentioned here is up now. - Atarr 23:39, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
phylogenetically speaking means they are RELATED not the same, you are not your grandparents, today animals are clasiffied into families based purely by what they have evolved INTO, not what they evolved FROM, yes they have a common ancester but now they are birds and reptiles, I would like to keep dionsaurs seperate from both catagories!
You don't appear to be familiar with cladistic classifications. These schemes, which are replacing classical Linnaean taxonomic schemes, define organisms by what they evolved from. To seperately list reptiles, dinosaurs, and birds would be a paraphyletic classification scheme, and cladistic taxonomy avoids such schemes (although they are not as frowned upon as polyphyletic schemes.
To put it in layman's terms: birds are a well-defined clade - they're just everything that descended from Archaeopteryx. No problems there. But you seem to want to define dinosaurs as everything descending from primitive dinosaurs - say, eoraptor, or just whatever was the first archosaur that diverged from crocodilians - EXCEPT birds. That "except" makes this definition sort of ad-hoc, just as any morphological definition would be. You're trying to base the classifications on some subjective idea of how animals "should" be divided, as oppose to some objective biological criteria.
The same can be said of any definition of reptiles that leaves out dinosaurs (or really, by extension, birds). I haven't heard of anyone trying to argue scientifically that dinosaurs aren't reptiles - you're sort of on your own there. There's no good argument for seperating dinosaurs out, unless you want to scrap reptilia altogether and list scaly reptiles, turtles, and crocodilians seperately from one another, as well.
I did leave birds seperate from reptiles, as you see. My reasoning was simply that there are a lot of birds, there is a lot of interest in that subject, and it is considered a seperate class in standard Linnaean taxonomy that used to be in all the textbooks (and still is in a lot of them). If I wanted to make the article perfectly consistent with the latest thinking in the biological community, I would make the entire bird section a subset of theropods, which in turn is a subset of dinosaurs, which in turn is a subset of reptilia. In stead of doing this, I just made a note at the start of the dinosaur and bird sections that explains the reasoning of the current layout. I think this is a fair compromise between the old and new systems. - Atarr 23:50, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Your rational is sound: Simple compromise, Dinosaurs now have a seperate section, noone should have a problem with that...212.158.133.194 12:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Huh? Again, dinosaurs are considered reptiles BOTH in classical Linnean Taxonomy (see here, for instance) AND in cladistics. There's no conflict that would lead to us putting dinosaurs seperate. Birds are a case where cladistics and Linnean taxonomy differ, hence the need for a compromise handling of it. - Atarr 20:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Dinosaurs are reptiles, birds are dinosaurs, which makes them in cladistic classification reptiles. Still, let's have "==reptiles==", "===dinosaurs===" and "====birds====" or "==birds==" because Linnean taxonomy differs... Dora Nichov 11:31, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I see that has been done though. Dora Nichov 11:32, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gross inaccuracy

Fascinating: almost every reported measurement for the listed animals is wrong, mostly on the large size. Listing errors of articles is nothing new to me, but if I were to do so here, the list would be about the same length as the article. It's that bad. And not worth the effort. The greatest inaccuracies that were spotted by my eye were Giant Anteater at 65 kg (143 lb, up to 39 kg/86 lb in reality), Giant Armadillo at 60 kg (132 lb, actually 32 kg/71 lb – this is understandable though: many books have got it wrong) and Great Blue Turaco at 1.2 m and 1.7 kg (4 ft and 3.8 lb, actually 75 cm/29½ in and 950 g/33.5 oz). Also, some of the categories have the wrong species. --Anshelm '77 13:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

  • I tagged the page again and will continue to do so if this page is not corrected befor it is removed.John Doe or Jane Doe 15:00, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Feel free to remove anything not sourced. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:30, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I checked the anteater reference (from the giant anteater page) and it is accurately reflected here. If you have another source, then cite it, and make the fix. Likewise for Armadillo. I fixed the Turaco, although I found a larger mass citation than you.
There are still some citation issues here that need to be resolved, but a lot of the citations are just on the specific pages of that organism, which should be fine. In the meantime, I'm removing the "factual dispute" tag, since there's no dispute between seperate cited sources here. If you have any further factual objections, then be specific about them. - Atarr 16:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Ok sorry, You win, I will let you work on this page after a bit more reserch I see I was wrong, please accept my appology. There are factual disputes, see below "Fish Stories" I see now I miss read the aves section and was also mistaken! I will nolonger hastaly edit.John Doe or Jane Doe 20:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Many big-fish-stories and mistakes

I´ve seen that many of the "records" in the list of the biggest fishes are only big-fish-stories, many of them already easy to identify by completely false dimensions. There are false sizes of the wels catfish, the beluga sturgeon, the Arapaima, the giant morray (which is in fact heavier) and some more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.224.119.207 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Largest primate ever-Robert Wadlow?

I'm just wondering in terms of the largest primate subject ever found, in comparison to the case of the largest living elephant ever documented. would Robert Wadlow be considred the largest primate ever documented? he was 8'11" and weighed more than 400 pounds. has there ever been a cotemporary individual primate larger than this that has been found? Duhon 05:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Heh. He may well have been the tallest (verified). Gigantopithecus says: "Gigantopithecus was likely about 3 metres tall and weighed from 300 to 500 kg..." (660 to 1,100 lbs). These height/weight numbers are rough estimates. My guess is that the weight is likely more accurate than the height, as we don't have a very good idea of the overall appearance of Gigantopithecus. 8'11' ' = 2.72 meters. 400 lbs = 180 kg. -- 201.51.231.176 12:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

True but the gigantopithecus is an extinct species. i was reffering more to primate species currently existing.Duhon 18:13, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Carol Yager weighed as much as a bull moose. PenguinJockey 07:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I like the current way the article handles this. We make mention in passing of the exceptional humans, but these are exceptions, and moreover they are exceptions that, if humans lived in a wild state, would probably not survive. I'm not familiar with any really healthy humans, not afflicted with a pituitary disorder or morbid obesity, who have weighed over 400 pounds. A few competitors in the World's Strongest Man have been near 400 pounds, and I suppose Akebono Taro, while clearly obsese, was in some sense healthy at 500+ pounds. Still, Lowland gorillas can be healthy and non-obese at 500 pounds, and captive ones have weighed much more.
Humans really are the tallest living primates, though, as there are healthy humans who do not have any sort of pituitary disorder who have reached 7'7" and even 7'9"; I've never heard of another primate that tall. If we want to make note of that, that would be fine. - Atarr 19:54, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pig

I have removed this section:

  • Pig. The world record for the heaviest pig so far is held by Big Bill, owned by Elias Buford Butler of Jackson, Tennessee. It was a Poland China breed of hog that tipped the scales at 2,552 lb. (1,157 kg.) in 1933.[1] Bill was due to be exhibited at the Chicago World Fair when he broke a leg and had to be put down. At about this point in time, the trend in hog production began to shift to hogs that were much trimmer and very lean. [2] For other pigs of notable size see List of pigs over 1000 pounds.

I did this because a pig is part of the order Artiodactyla & even the "monster hogs" are smaller than, say, a Hippo, Giraffe or a even a large bovid. Perhaps some of this pig text could be incorporated into the Artiodactyla section.

[edit] Dinosaur weight (tons vs kg)

The measures of dinosaurs' weights both in kilograms and tons will certainly confuse at least European readers of this article. Do these numbers refer by any chance to the long ton? I believe that a large majority of readers will assume that the unit used is in fact the metrical ton (= 1000 kg), and then wonder about the inacurracy of the kg/ton equation. As I am not familiar with this "larger" ton unit, I am not going to interfer with this, but I suggest that those kilogram indications be omitted (as, commonly, weights in excess of 10.000 kg are not indicated in kg anymore, but in tons) and replaced by indications in metrical tons. I hope this doesn't offend the English or American contributors to this article; the idea is just for greater clarity. Trigaranus 01:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is the Great Barrier Reef a superorganism?

This topic is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.
The section or sections that need attention may be noted in a message below.

The opening paragraph currently contains the statement: "The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef (stretching 2,000 km) has been shown to be a collection of many organisms and is the largest known superorganism." I'm no expert in this stuff, but I followed the link to the Wikipedia article on superorganisms, and it seemed to me that the reef would not qualify. The "superorganism" was defined as a collection of organisms with a strongly cohesive social behavior, such that individuals could not effectively live outside of the society. An ant colony was the paradigmatic example. I question whether a coral colony fits that description, and invite anyone with expertise on this to weigh in. (I put a "citation needed" tag on the statement in the article.) Thanks. The article is otherwise very informative and well-written. --TomChatt (talk) 18:12, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Split

At about 83 kB, the article is vey large. Roughly 70 kB deal with animals, around 47 kB of which is specific to vertebrates. The article could be split into two or even three. The obvious thing to do would be to split out animals leaving a summary on the current page giving us perhaps about 20 kB (a decent size). Next, we could possibly do the same with the new Largest animals page splitting vertebrates out (again leaving about 20 kB after a summary is written). JЇѦρ 07:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

How is it too big? It's fine the way it is. TeePee-20.7 (talk) 11:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
You can't really put a exact figure on it but 80 kB is on the large side ... or for a more full answer take a look at WP:SIZE. It is a fine article to be sure. Largest animals would make a fine article too though I feel. In fact it just might be that this is the term that people would more likely search for (so it should be created as a redirect at least). JЇѦρ 15:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
How do you think I get here and even found this page? Largest Animals does already redirect to this page. TeePee-20.7 (talk) 09:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
And on quick look this page doesn't even make the top 500 longest pages on wikipedia. I say don't fix something that isn't broken it's good the way it is. TeePee-20.7 (talk) 09:14, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
There are 2,410,497 articles on WP. Thus "not in the top 500" is equivalent to "not in the top ~0.021%". Wikipedia is good the way it is ... not broken ... but people still keep trying to make it better. JЇѦρ 19:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm just saying it's not high on priority so why try to fix this article when it's fine I think we should be worrying about the other's first. TeePee-20.7 (talk) 05:28, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
So you don't actually oppose its being split, it's just that there are other things in more urgent need of attention. Yes, there are higher priorities but one of these days someone might as well get around to doing this. JЇѦρ 01:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Well if it is split it needs to be done correctly and should be more of a convienience than inconvienience. But I am opposed because I like it the way it is, it groups together all the animals quite well and you can find pretty much evrything you want to know about the largest animals in the one spot, and it also includes things which you might not have learnt otherwise such as the largest trees, largest superorganism, etc. Things I would not have bothered reading or looking up if it wern't for this article. TeePee-20.7 (talk) 10:44, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistent sawfish

The linked specific page for the sawfish "Pristis perotteti" doesn't back up the claim of more than 2.4 tonnes, but says only 591 kg. I explored this issue a bit, but only got confused. There seems to be some single exceptional measurement. All the other sawfish maximum weights are in the 500 kg range. It doesn't help that both Wikipedia and Fishbase have one species "Large-tooth sawfish" versus one other species "Largetooth sawfish" and one of them is scientifically named "Pristis microdon" meaning "Small-tooth Sawfish" in Greek. Of course, "Small-tooth sawfish" is a completely different species. Maybe some pristiological expert can make sense of it. Stupid girl (talk) 06:13, 19 May 2008 (UTC)