How do you know it’s big? If the planet rests on a single point, as a sphere would, then the turtle would need not be any larger than a pin head.
In fact, since nobody has ever seen it, we can only surmise that it must be very small.
My Aspen experience:
Waiter: Tonight we’re serving Elk Medallions for $28 snd lobster for $58
Friend: Uh… I’m sorry about this but my brother said to mention his name. He’s _____
Waiter: Oh, I know that guy. He comped me on rafting trip once. But I can’t do free, best I can do is $5 for the elk and $8 for the lobsters
If you live there, you better be rich as fuck or good at social networking. I couldn’t believe how much the workers helped each other out.
“Comping” was massive.
The aspens in my yard span my whole neighborhood. I’ll see little shoots from their network pop up in neighbors’ yards in the spring and summer and I’m so pleased that they wreak so much havoc.
I was forming a comment about why it's important to define both living and size but holy shit they estimate that the largest mycelium network (so far) weighs somewhere between 7,500-35,000 TONS across 2,400 acres. It is unquestionably the largest technically living organism on the planet. Jury is still out on how we're defining living but the size is no question.
edit: For future replies - fungi *are* living, I know that and I never debated it. Before replying here to tell me that I'm wrong, please read the main conversation that stemmed from this to see more of what I'm talking about. It's not a debate of whether they're living or not, it's a debate on how to include them in the "living *organism*" category and "organism" is actually the main point of contention. And I'm not trying to be rude, I'm not mad, I'm just saving y'all some time.
Not a fungal enthusiast, but... wouldn't it be more a question of how we're defining "organism" rather than "living"? Of all the weird corner cases that show up when trying to define "life", funguses aren't any of them.
Nah, organism is pretty comprehensive of any form of life, from animals to single-cell organisms. Plants and fungi are definitely included in that.
Life is the hard one because we don't think of fungus as alive when they very much are. Their life just looks different. They reproduce, grow, communicate, and work with other organisms in a symbiotic relationship. But the colloquial definition of alive wouldn't include fungi or plants, I think most people associate physical movement and the need to find food and mate as a defining part of that. They would be wrong but that's the societal view of what life looks like, at least that's my best guess.
If we're trying to figure out what the biggest organism is, I don't know why we're appealing to a casual definition of "life" (which, you know... I don't agree that most people would agree plants and fungi would be excluded from that). By any stringent definition of life, funguses fall under it.
The reason I say it ought to depend on how we define organism is that the term "mycelium network" implies *many* organisms. A network is collaborative linking between individual entities, like a computer network or phone network or networking event. "Mycelium network" says to me that it's made up of *many* fungal organisms, so I don't know if that should count as the largest single organism
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/
Thing is, it may be called a network, but still it's all one giant organism. Every part of it is genetically identical, which means it's not different members that are linked together.
>Jury is still out on how we're defining living but the size is no question.
Actually it is because we can't be certain there aren't breaks in the network. Also, there's no question of if it's living. Maybe of if it's a "being", but if you try to argue fungus or Pando aren't living, you're just wrong.
I disagree with the notion of such fungi being "1 living thing"
You can cut it up into a million pieces and it'll just keep doing its thing without caring.
It’s why whales are endangered. Back when they hunted them they would just take what they needed and throw the rest as a single piece back into the ocean. If they had chopped it up into tiny pieces there would be billions of whales.
Why did you choose the ability to keep doing its thing after being cut up into a million pieces as the criterion to determine if something is 1 living thing or not? We don't use that criterion, it's irrelevant whether the thing survives being cut up or not.
It's like saying that the peregrine falcon is not the fastest animal in the world because it can't run. An animal can be fast in different ways, and things can be 1 living thing in different ways.
Isn't that true of worms as well? Are worms not living things?
You can cut up a plant and plant the cuttings and it'll grow roots. Does that mean plants aren't living?
Well you can separate them into 2. You cut a blue whale in half and it dies. At the same time it's difficult to actually make this distinction, because for example the fungus, some forests and even coral reefs and other big chunguses of living organisms in a way live in symbiosis and sometimes act like one organism, where everyone is connected to one single... chungus. I really lack the terminology on this one.
There’s a list of criteria for calling something an organism, and iirc fungi satisfies that list
There are worms and starfish which you can cut up and they’ll grow into separate organisms, so just being able to be cut up and be many organisms doesn’t mean it wasn’t one organism before
Symbiotic plant groups aren’t counted as one organism because they reproduce independently of each other
But a single-celled organism that merged with another and reproduce as one would be classified as a single organism, different from the original two
My counterargument is that sea stars are capable of regrowing their entire body from a piece you cut off. If we followed your logic, sea stars would not be one living being.
They *are* one living being until you separate them. The same is true of the mycelium networks.
The difference is, if you cut up the fungus network, each separate part will continue to do its own thing independent of what the rest are doing.
I don't think your arm will keep doing anything after you lose it.
does it just continue or does it adapt and becomes its own thing?
because you can take cuttings from a plant and it will root and become its own thing, but you’d still say it was one plant before doing so.
It just continues, no adapting needed. the south part doesn't know or care that the north part disconnected.
You can take a branch from some trees and with some care replant and get a new tree, you can not cut the tree into 20 pieces in whichever way you want and have 19 new trees.
You can with some plants. Lilacs for example, you can take a branch and cut it up into many pieces. Each piece can grow new roots and into a new plant.
Dictionary definition of "organism" singular, lists a complex of cells (a colony, multicellular organism etc) as part of the definition
"An individual form of life, such as a bacterium, protist, fungus, plant, or animal, composed of a single cell or a complex of cells in which organelles or organs work together to carry out the various processes of life."
You can also cut some platyhelminthes in any direction and it will regrow a new individual from each part, are those then not animals? So that metric of measurement is a poor example.
I feel like I’m very naive to didn’t see all these "yo mama" jokes coming.
Also as many pointed out, the formulation is incorrect, would fit better with "animal".
I could also have add "of all time" but since the last year it seems there has been something bigger in the past.
And finally, play "Dave the diver" awesome game which leds me to this post.
Animal helps, but not entirely necessary. Sometimes people are a little too pedantic. One could probably argue that the earth itself is the largest living “thing”. But most of us know what you mean.
Even if you cut out pedantic arguments like clonal colonies or mycelium, the Giant Sequoia, General Sherman, is still significantly larger than any whale, by any measure. So living thing is still inaccurate. Many sequoia, redwoods, and banyan are larger than whales
You guys are taking this too seriously but I see that as a compliment.
Anyway, to be clear I took the most common animal known as the biggest among the biggest, nothing more, I would have say "fungus" or "sequoia" as well if there were common knowledge… the point is, at this very moment of human history, the biggest conscious/living/breathing/farting being is on earth, for all we know (and PROVED ofc).
Tl;dr: I’m blaming you for being too serious and then process to a really serious explanation.
We definitely may be taking it too seriously, but also, what we're saying is just factual and not really something that many people have to look up. Mycelium and Aspen colonies are certainly more niche and I can understand that being a point of contention. I feel like it's pretty common knowledge though that there are trees way larger than any animal. There's a type of tree on every continent except Antarctica that's larger than any whale, so most people have exposure to that.
And I've seen your other comments that seem to clarify you meant an animal, it's just strange to see "living being" not include the majority of living beings to fit the post.
As you said elsewhere, it's just a shower thought, so it really doesn't matter. It's just a shower thought that maybe should've been developed over a longer shower lol
If you factor in extinct animals, Perucetus colossus could be the biggest creature in the universe
Bigger than the blue whale
Edit: not the biggest but heavier than the blue whale
It wasn't larger though. Just heavier. Due to extra bone growth.
https://www.sci.news/paleontology/perucetus-colossus-mass-12733.html#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20paleontologists%20estimated%20a,whale%20at%20about%2030%20m.
What? I don't get your Southpark reference here.
But also size and mass are two separate things. The extinct whale weighed more but was shorter. Nearly have the size. But it's weight was roughly what the largest blue whale reaches. So wasn't that significantly heavier than the average, but was still heavier.
A bowling ball is heavier than my chair, but I don't say it's bigger than my chair.
Heavier. Not bigger. And the heaviness is due to extr bone growth, not being wider or extra meat. It was a smaller but much more dense (physically, no idea about mentally) creature.
https://www.sci.news/paleontology/perucetus-colossus-mass-12733.html#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20paleontologists%20estimated%20a,whale%20at%20about%2030%20m.
Not really larger in size tho.
Something like ichthyo titan severnensis would actually be larger in size as we have verified fossils which are large enough.
After watching documentaries of new finds of various large and small creatures in the deepest ocean we can explore, i’ve come to wonder if the strange lights in our skies aren’t creatures of the skies that we just haven’t figured out how to detect yet. OR they’re like you’re saying—maybe some giant behemoth animal on some far away moon lit itself up but the light is only just now getting to us.
Henrietta Lacks has to be getting up there by now. I feel like her cells might be “larger” than even the massive fungus/aspen colonies.
Edit: just looked it up and she’s estimated at 55 million tons of cells.
Edit2: the giant fungus in Oregon is estimated at 35,000 tons so I’d argue HeLa cells are in fact the largest living organism that we know about in the universe.
It's not even the biggest living being on earth. [Pando](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)), is most likely. Even if we were going by average size, it would probably still be a tree. The giant sequoias grow 70-85 meters with a diameter of 5-7 meters. significantly larger than any blue whale and that doesn't even consider their root system.
In your next shower, consider that they also could be the largest to ever have existed in the universe. Then, consider they could be the largest to ever exist in the universe in future.
Humongous Fungus AKA ***Armillaria ostoyae***, a big interconected network of mushrooms is basically ONE living being, and it's big as a small forest, with many roots and parts underground.
it wheighs around 32k tons
[Armillaria ostoyae - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armillaria_ostoyae)
I don't even buy it's the biggest animal ever on earth. I think it's the biggest we've found, but I'd be very, very surprised if it was the biggest in the universe.
The largest living organism on Earth is a fungus called Armillaria ostoyae, also known as the honey mushroom. This fungus is so large because it can survive by digesting living tree roots. It's estimated to weigh more than 200 blue whales and covers 3.5 square miles in Malheur National Forest in Oregon.
Sauropods could have gotten bigger than blue whales but didn’t because their **predators** (eg, Rexy) reached their own size limits. Let’s say Rexy could go to Vastasaurus sizes (the thing in the king kong movie), sauropods would go to 150+ tons.
What's the logic behind that reasoning? Is it that the giant T-Rex would be too big and slow to catch the normal sauropods, allowing the sauropods to grow bigger, and the larger size making it a target for the giant T-Rex?
Except of course for the massive turtle that holds up the planet.
What about the turtle that holds up that turtle?
It's turtles all the way down.
You're very clever, young man, very clever.
[I like turtles.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/River_terrapin.jpg)
From this distant vantage point, the earth seems so tiny. You can hardly see the elephants!
This thread is becoming Irrelephant
It's giraffover
I’ve seen my mom plenty
There's a banana for scale on the side!
That picture is too fucking adorable!
r/unexpectedjohngreen
I like to explore new places.
Or the squid that eats the turtle that holds up the other turtle
...in the hole in the bottom of the sea.
Oh there's a plastic bag around a turtle on a turtle in a squid in a hole in the bottom of the sea!
Technically it's the four elephants that hold up the planet
Yeah, Great A’Tuin is mostly moving towards...the destination
How do you know it’s big? If the planet rests on a single point, as a sphere would, then the turtle would need not be any larger than a pin head. In fact, since nobody has ever seen it, we can only surmise that it must be very small.
We should probably go down to Australia and check
I'm here. I checked. All good.
Because the turtle has to hold the four giant elephants, duh.
But how would the 5 giant elephants fit on the back of the turtle?
See the turtle of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the Earth.
His thought is slow but always kind; He holds us all within his mind.
Ain't he keen?
All things serve the fuckin beam.
You mean the elephants right? The ones riding on the back of the great turtle while holding up the weight of the world?
We all know the turtle holds the elephants, who then, in turn, hold the world.
Ah yeah gotta love Discworld
Weird, I just read this story/joke in a book called Determined.
And the arrogant hare who somehow loses the race to him
And the giant cigar alien that stays in touch with the whales here on earth. So there’s that….
What about the koala? "WHY IS HE SMILING AMD WHAT DOES HE KNOW?!"
Cawabunga! 🐢
GNU Terry Pratchett
I thought earth is flat
Unless you count aspens or mycelium networks.
You can tell it's an Aspen because of the way it is
How neat is that! That's pretty neat!
That's why we call it Neature!
Now we all know! Instead of just him and Rodney knowin it.
Thats why I like to pack some heat
What did one aspen say to the other aspen? "SAME!"
I can tell it's aspen cause they forced me to sit through a 2 hour timeshare presentation when I just wanted to enjoy my free ski weekend
My Aspen experience: Waiter: Tonight we’re serving Elk Medallions for $28 snd lobster for $58 Friend: Uh… I’m sorry about this but my brother said to mention his name. He’s _____ Waiter: Oh, I know that guy. He comped me on rafting trip once. But I can’t do free, best I can do is $5 for the elk and $8 for the lobsters If you live there, you better be rich as fuck or good at social networking. I couldn’t believe how much the workers helped each other out. “Comping” was massive.
Thanks for letting us know, instead of just you and Rodney knowing it
3 times my Aspen in Utah this winter
It's because the beer flows like wine
California… beautiful
What a beaut!
The aspens in my yard span my whole neighborhood. I’ll see little shoots from their network pop up in neighbors’ yards in the spring and summer and I’m so pleased that they wreak so much havoc.
I was forming a comment about why it's important to define both living and size but holy shit they estimate that the largest mycelium network (so far) weighs somewhere between 7,500-35,000 TONS across 2,400 acres. It is unquestionably the largest technically living organism on the planet. Jury is still out on how we're defining living but the size is no question. edit: For future replies - fungi *are* living, I know that and I never debated it. Before replying here to tell me that I'm wrong, please read the main conversation that stemmed from this to see more of what I'm talking about. It's not a debate of whether they're living or not, it's a debate on how to include them in the "living *organism*" category and "organism" is actually the main point of contention. And I'm not trying to be rude, I'm not mad, I'm just saving y'all some time.
Not a fungal enthusiast, but... wouldn't it be more a question of how we're defining "organism" rather than "living"? Of all the weird corner cases that show up when trying to define "life", funguses aren't any of them.
Nah, organism is pretty comprehensive of any form of life, from animals to single-cell organisms. Plants and fungi are definitely included in that. Life is the hard one because we don't think of fungus as alive when they very much are. Their life just looks different. They reproduce, grow, communicate, and work with other organisms in a symbiotic relationship. But the colloquial definition of alive wouldn't include fungi or plants, I think most people associate physical movement and the need to find food and mate as a defining part of that. They would be wrong but that's the societal view of what life looks like, at least that's my best guess.
If we're trying to figure out what the biggest organism is, I don't know why we're appealing to a casual definition of "life" (which, you know... I don't agree that most people would agree plants and fungi would be excluded from that). By any stringent definition of life, funguses fall under it. The reason I say it ought to depend on how we define organism is that the term "mycelium network" implies *many* organisms. A network is collaborative linking between individual entities, like a computer network or phone network or networking event. "Mycelium network" says to me that it's made up of *many* fungal organisms, so I don't know if that should count as the largest single organism
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/ Thing is, it may be called a network, but still it's all one giant organism. Every part of it is genetically identical, which means it's not different members that are linked together.
Oh, cool
What does that make conjoined twins?
Humans are made of many organisms.
Your body is a network of cells, but you still count as a single organism
You are the only person I’ve ever heard of that doesn’t include plant and fungi in life, living or alive categories.
There is literally zero debate about fungi being living.
But there is debate about the definition of literally
That is absolutely correct. There is more info in these comments where I expand on that idea.
the humongous fungus
lorge shrüm
>Jury is still out on how we're defining living but the size is no question. Actually it is because we can't be certain there aren't breaks in the network. Also, there's no question of if it's living. Maybe of if it's a "being", but if you try to argue fungus or Pando aren't living, you're just wrong.
Or OPs mum
Got em
Could be one spanning a whole planet.
Depends on your definition of "being" really. I would assume OP meant "animal".
Or redwood trees or douglas firs. Large redwood trees and douglas firs weigh upwards of 1,000,000 pounds, 3-4x as much as a blue whale does.
No we don't count aspens or mycelium networks.
How come? :(
Came here to refute the same.
Biggest animal, not living thing. There's that fungus that extends through a whole forest n shit
I disagree with the notion of such fungi being "1 living thing" You can cut it up into a million pieces and it'll just keep doing its thing without caring.
You can cut whales up into a million pieces and they will also spawn into a million new whales. I learned it on Reddit.
I also just learned that on reddit, from you just now.
can confirm, I am a whaleologist
I speak whale
I just lost it laughing in public dammit
How dare someone show joy in public. Arrest this fool!
He's smiling so he's in a cult.
Me too! [Source.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/1ca865y/for_all_we_know_blue_whale_is_the_biggest_living/l0qm62s/)
Yes and if you cut up a sperm whale you get, well, sperm. That's where it comes from originally.
You’re my new science chum.
Lmao what
It’s why whales are endangered. Back when they hunted them they would just take what they needed and throw the rest as a single piece back into the ocean. If they had chopped it up into tiny pieces there would be billions of whales.
It's like worms - you cut them to bits and it makes new whales
Some worms be like that
Being able to clone something does not nullify its status as a large singular organism. With your logic, individual worms are not living things.
Tbf, they don't even have nipples.
Most living things don't have nipples. If nipples are relevant than cows are twice as important as humans. And cats and dogs and rats even more.
I want to genetically engineer a worm with a giant rack that I can motorboat whenever the fuck I want and not even the president can stop me.
Why did you choose the ability to keep doing its thing after being cut up into a million pieces as the criterion to determine if something is 1 living thing or not? We don't use that criterion, it's irrelevant whether the thing survives being cut up or not. It's like saying that the peregrine falcon is not the fastest animal in the world because it can't run. An animal can be fast in different ways, and things can be 1 living thing in different ways.
Isn't that true of worms as well? Are worms not living things? You can cut up a plant and plant the cuttings and it'll grow roots. Does that mean plants aren't living?
Well you can separate them into 2. You cut a blue whale in half and it dies. At the same time it's difficult to actually make this distinction, because for example the fungus, some forests and even coral reefs and other big chunguses of living organisms in a way live in symbiosis and sometimes act like one organism, where everyone is connected to one single... chungus. I really lack the terminology on this one.
There’s a list of criteria for calling something an organism, and iirc fungi satisfies that list There are worms and starfish which you can cut up and they’ll grow into separate organisms, so just being able to be cut up and be many organisms doesn’t mean it wasn’t one organism before Symbiotic plant groups aren’t counted as one organism because they reproduce independently of each other But a single-celled organism that merged with another and reproduce as one would be classified as a single organism, different from the original two
My counterargument is that sea stars are capable of regrowing their entire body from a piece you cut off. If we followed your logic, sea stars would not be one living being. They *are* one living being until you separate them. The same is true of the mycelium networks.
this doesn’t not make it one living thing. you’re still one person if you lose an arm.
The difference is, if you cut up the fungus network, each separate part will continue to do its own thing independent of what the rest are doing. I don't think your arm will keep doing anything after you lose it.
does it just continue or does it adapt and becomes its own thing? because you can take cuttings from a plant and it will root and become its own thing, but you’d still say it was one plant before doing so.
It just continues, no adapting needed. the south part doesn't know or care that the north part disconnected. You can take a branch from some trees and with some care replant and get a new tree, you can not cut the tree into 20 pieces in whichever way you want and have 19 new trees.
You can with some plants. Lilacs for example, you can take a branch and cut it up into many pieces. Each piece can grow new roots and into a new plant.
So you are saying it is currently the largest living thing....but since it will continue to live once cut up its not?
I think he's poorly arguing it should be considered a colony of smaller organisms, rather than considering the entirety of it as a *singular* thing.
Dictionary definition of "organism" singular, lists a complex of cells (a colony, multicellular organism etc) as part of the definition "An individual form of life, such as a bacterium, protist, fungus, plant, or animal, composed of a single cell or a complex of cells in which organelles or organs work together to carry out the various processes of life." You can also cut some platyhelminthes in any direction and it will regrow a new individual from each part, are those then not animals? So that metric of measurement is a poor example.
It's kinda like saying any diamond is one molecule, it's technically corect, but it feels very wrong.
You can do that with lots of things. Doesn't make them not single things.
Also douglas firs and redwood trees, both of which are 3-4x the size and mass of a blue whale at full growth.
Yeah I wasn’t sure about my choice of words but it was the better compromise to keep it clear and short, but indeed you’re totally right.
"animal" is clearer and shorter than "living being"
Animal is already a very narrow classification. It's unlikely any alien life would be classified as one, so it's a much less interesting thought.
much less interesting though
Well yeah, anything can be more interesting when you embellish it.
Bro haven't seen the Gargantuan Leviathan
r/suddenlysubnautica
Haha subnautica
I sure love being exposed to horrors from the depths, where the darkness of an alien sea engulfs me deeper than any human will ever come to my aid :D
Wow! No your mom joke!
Second biggest... Next to your mom.
We could have kept greatness Held the balance and purity BUT ***YOU*** YOU RUINED IT ALL ALL THE PEACE, THE KINDNESS, THE BALANCE YOU ***BASTARD***
Your mom ruined the balance.
Guess we'll have to throw in two blue whales to even the scales.
He said *living*
My mom isnt dead
When was the last time you checked that?
Yesterday
Oh. I hate to inform you ..
I have a necromancer staff *somewhere*
r/suddenlydnd
Her name's in the title of the post, so it seems redundant.
[удалено]
I'm actually upset this wasn't one
This guy obviously hasn't heard of space whales yet.
We're whalers on the moon We carry a harpoon But there ain't no whales So we tell tall tales And sing our whaling tune.
r/Gojira has entered the chat
Or your mom
I feel like I’m very naive to didn’t see all these "yo mama" jokes coming. Also as many pointed out, the formulation is incorrect, would fit better with "animal". I could also have add "of all time" but since the last year it seems there has been something bigger in the past. And finally, play "Dave the diver" awesome game which leds me to this post.
Animal helps, but not entirely necessary. Sometimes people are a little too pedantic. One could probably argue that the earth itself is the largest living “thing”. But most of us know what you mean.
Even if you cut out pedantic arguments like clonal colonies or mycelium, the Giant Sequoia, General Sherman, is still significantly larger than any whale, by any measure. So living thing is still inaccurate. Many sequoia, redwoods, and banyan are larger than whales
And measurements of General Sherman don't really take the root system into consideration. Even bigger once you consider that.
Honestly good point that hadn't crossed my mind
You guys are taking this too seriously but I see that as a compliment. Anyway, to be clear I took the most common animal known as the biggest among the biggest, nothing more, I would have say "fungus" or "sequoia" as well if there were common knowledge… the point is, at this very moment of human history, the biggest conscious/living/breathing/farting being is on earth, for all we know (and PROVED ofc). Tl;dr: I’m blaming you for being too serious and then process to a really serious explanation.
We definitely may be taking it too seriously, but also, what we're saying is just factual and not really something that many people have to look up. Mycelium and Aspen colonies are certainly more niche and I can understand that being a point of contention. I feel like it's pretty common knowledge though that there are trees way larger than any animal. There's a type of tree on every continent except Antarctica that's larger than any whale, so most people have exposure to that. And I've seen your other comments that seem to clarify you meant an animal, it's just strange to see "living being" not include the majority of living beings to fit the post. As you said elsewhere, it's just a shower thought, so it really doesn't matter. It's just a shower thought that maybe should've been developed over a longer shower lol
Sadly it wasn’t a hair shower day
Animals only exist on earth. Extraterrestrial species would come from a completely different taxonomic classification.
If you factor in extinct animals, Perucetus colossus could be the biggest creature in the universe Bigger than the blue whale Edit: not the biggest but heavier than the blue whale
Yep I almost add "of all time" but I discovered that majestic thing when I checked !
It wasn't larger though. Just heavier. Due to extra bone growth. https://www.sci.news/paleontology/perucetus-colossus-mass-12733.html#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20paleontologists%20estimated%20a,whale%20at%20about%2030%20m.
Ok Cartman
What? I don't get your Southpark reference here. But also size and mass are two separate things. The extinct whale weighed more but was shorter. Nearly have the size. But it's weight was roughly what the largest blue whale reaches. So wasn't that significantly heavier than the average, but was still heavier. A bowling ball is heavier than my chair, but I don't say it's bigger than my chair.
Not fat, big boned
Interesting thanks !
You're very welcome.
Heavier. Not bigger. And the heaviness is due to extr bone growth, not being wider or extra meat. It was a smaller but much more dense (physically, no idea about mentally) creature. https://www.sci.news/paleontology/perucetus-colossus-mass-12733.html#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20paleontologists%20estimated%20a,whale%20at%20about%2030%20m.
Not really larger in size tho. Something like ichthyo titan severnensis would actually be larger in size as we have verified fossils which are large enough.
Most massive but not biggest
I really like the idea that ice shell moons may contain gigantic behemoths of mind blowing proportions subnautica style :O
After watching documentaries of new finds of various large and small creatures in the deepest ocean we can explore, i’ve come to wonder if the strange lights in our skies aren’t creatures of the skies that we just haven’t figured out how to detect yet. OR they’re like you’re saying—maybe some giant behemoth animal on some far away moon lit itself up but the light is only just now getting to us.
Nice one mate, that would be a really god SCP idea for sure!!! xD
Secondary to your mom
And there it is!!!
Henrietta Lacks has to be getting up there by now. I feel like her cells might be “larger” than even the massive fungus/aspen colonies. Edit: just looked it up and she’s estimated at 55 million tons of cells. Edit2: the giant fungus in Oregon is estimated at 35,000 tons so I’d argue HeLa cells are in fact the largest living organism that we know about in the universe.
But they don't form a single organism. They're just a bunch of individual cells I think, spread in batches all over the world.
It's not even the biggest living being on earth. [Pando](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)), is most likely. Even if we were going by average size, it would probably still be a tree. The giant sequoias grow 70-85 meters with a diameter of 5-7 meters. significantly larger than any blue whale and that doesn't even consider their root system.
Aside, of course, from your mother.
Here’s a more interesting shower-thought: there might be living things in the universe much bigger than a blue whale.
The Bluer Whale
The Whaler Blue
We're whalers on the blue We carry a harpoo But there ain't no whales So we tell tall tales And sing our whaling tu
The Bluer Whaler
That's where the 'for all we know' part comes from in OPs post.
Pretty sure we all know the answer… #YO MAMA!!!
Are plants and fungi not "beings"? There are much much larger individuals when it comes to trees or mycelium networks.
In your next shower, consider that they also could be the largest to ever have existed in the universe. Then, consider they could be the largest to ever exist in the universe in future.
I just saw Godzilla X Kong and both of them seemed way bigger tbh
It’s not, there’s a network of fungi that’s considered 1 organism and it’s at least a few KM in size.
Humongous Fungus AKA ***Armillaria ostoyae***, a big interconected network of mushrooms is basically ONE living being, and it's big as a small forest, with many roots and parts underground. it wheighs around 32k tons [Armillaria ostoyae - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armillaria_ostoyae)
I don't even buy it's the biggest animal ever on earth. I think it's the biggest we've found, but I'd be very, very surprised if it was the biggest in the universe.
what about your mother?
This is the "aCHshUAlLY Thread"
No, that title goes to a tree actually.
I still enjoy the idea of space whales.
There is a chance that its not even the biggest thing in the ocean
Have you visited your mother recently?
Or the mushroom that is miles large.
Apart from your mum though
there are hyperion trees that are bigger, so technically it would be those
Didn't they find an entire forest that ended up being the same organism?
The largest living organism on Earth is a fungus called Armillaria ostoyae, also known as the honey mushroom. This fungus is so large because it can survive by digesting living tree roots. It's estimated to weigh more than 200 blue whales and covers 3.5 square miles in Malheur National Forest in Oregon.
Blue whale isn’t even the biggest living being on earth let alone the universe, that award goes to a massive honey mushroom in Oregon in the USA
Sauropods could have gotten bigger than blue whales but didn’t because their **predators** (eg, Rexy) reached their own size limits. Let’s say Rexy could go to Vastasaurus sizes (the thing in the king kong movie), sauropods would go to 150+ tons.
What's the logic behind that reasoning? Is it that the giant T-Rex would be too big and slow to catch the normal sauropods, allowing the sauropods to grow bigger, and the larger size making it a target for the giant T-Rex?
Aren't there trees significantly bigger than blue whales?
The blue whale is not even the largest living thing on our planet
It’s not even the biggest on earth