The Biggest Organism On Earth

I know most people watching this have never seen me in person so you're gonna have to trust me when I say I'm about six foot seven inches tall or almost exactly two meters and as far as humans go that's pretty big not to brag or anything but if we take a look at an average American male he'll likely be only 5 foot 9 or 1.75 meters or only 87 percent of my size being the height that I am definitely has its advantages I can always reach things I was only chosen first to be on sports teams and the regular people cower in fear of me whenever I walk down the street but despite how big this might seem in the scope of living things I'm still real teeny-tiny if we look at baleen afterö musculus more commonly known as a blue whale we'll see an animal that can reach a length of 30 meters long and can weigh up to 157 tons and they've never had a recorded issue of being unable to reach the top shelf at the grocery store that's roughly 17 average people tall and equivalent to over a whopping 2,700 average people and wait long story short blue whales are pretty big and with these dimensions make it the most massive known animal to ever have roamed the earth several things contribute to the blue whales amazing size for starters by living in the ocean the whales own buoyancy means that skeleton doesn't need to work so hard to lift all of its weight being warm-blooded the blue wheel needs blubber to maintain body temperature making them much heavier than other marine organisms need to be there grazing habits taps into one of the lowest trophic levels gaining the blue whale degrees of magnitude more available energy than other coniferous animals and even other whales surprisingly however while definitely the most massive the blue whale isn't - the longest animal to have ever existed the extinct Argentinosaurus was the largest known dinosaur to have walked the earth having inhabited what's now Argentina approximately 97 to 93 million years ago now many fossils have been found at this creature only a couple vertebrae rib bones and parts of a leg bone because of this only estimates of the Argentine sources total length and weight can be made based on other smaller species similar to the Argentinosaurus these estimates can vary quite a lot but typically place the creature between 30 to 35 metres long from head to tail but even if it was a full 35 meters this still would not have been the longest animal ever that honor most likely falls upon the lion's mane jellyfish still swimming in our oceans today and native to the Arctic waters this is definitely one of those animals that you'll see and you'll think to yourself that's an alien the largest recorded specimen ever found washed up on the shores of Massachusetts Bay in the United States back in 1870 when completely stretched out the tentacles of this creature came out to an astounding 37 meters long making it the longest recorded single animal ever but as big as blue whale's crazy dinosaurs and alien jellyfish are life can get much much much bigger for this we'll need to leave the realm of animals and start looking at plants giant sequoias are the biggest tree species on earth found growing only in the North American West Coast predominantly in the American state of California currently the biggest individual tree is General Sherman which comes out to almost 84 meters tall from base to top or the length of 2.8 blue whales or 48 people tall of course this isn't even taking into account the roots which can reach another 14 meters deep into the ground in terms of Mass General Sherman comes in at nineteen hundred and ten tons which is over 4.2 million pounds that comes out to over 12 blue whales or nearly 31,000 people and wait but if that seems like a lot we're just getting started first off although General Sherman is the largest tree by volume there are in fact taller trees with the tallest one being named Hyperion also in California which stands at almost 116 meters tall a full 32 meters taller the General Sherman or in other words more than one full blue whale taller beyond this however we still have records of even more massive trees again all from California a tree called the Crandall Creek giant was believed to be between 15 and 25 percent larger than General Sherman by a volume that creates a maximum possible mass of almost 2400 tons or over 5.2 million pounds that would come out to be about 15 blue whale or 38,000 people which is absolutely insane to think about the city I live in now has a population of hardly over 40,000 so this one tree would have weighed about as much as everyone who lives here combined unfortunately the Crandall Creek giant was cut down in the mid 1940s but even this paled in comparison to the biggest tree ever recorded known as the Lindsay Creek tree found growing in Saudi Arabia I'm just kidding it was also in California the trunk volume of this tree was an estimated 90,000 cubic feet general sherman for comparison has a trunk volume of a little over 52,000 cubic feet so this would be a good indication of just how much larger the Lindsay Creek tree was measuring nearly twice the size of General Sherman all this volume translated into an approximate mass of nearly thirty three hundred tons or 7.2 million pounds this comes out to roughly 1.7 times the size of General Sherman or nearly 21 full-grown blue whales or just under fifty three thousand average fully grown humans measurements of its height put it at around 119 meters or 390 feet if true this would have made the Lindsay Creek tree not only the most massive but also the tallest organism we've talked about so far unfortunately this tree is no longer standing either having been blown down by a storm in 1905 there's no record of the trees roots by the way so the total volume of mass and height of the overall organism would have been even higher than this in all the Lindsay Creek tree was the largest single stem tree ever known to have existed but that's just single stem trees which yes means we're not done yet see while some trees like General Sherman have the strategy of growing one huge trunk that occupies a relatively small portion of the Earth's surface area there are other tree's called clonal trees yes clonal like clones that have the opposite strategy instead of one massive trunk they sprout multiple smaller trunks from the same root system these typically don't grow very tall but instead rely more on covering a large area to ensure its survival if allowed to grow continually well they'll do just that sometimes growing into basically islands of a single tree within a forest the biggest of these types of trees is located not too far away from the Giant Sequoias actually in south-central Utah again in the United States this tree is known by the name Pando seriously I'm not joking it translates into Latin as I spread out which well Yap and oh sure dead Pando is a member of the quaking aspen species which grow and store energy and nutrients in their roots from these roots the trees can sprout smaller individual trees that are still connected and it's genetically identical to the root system these new trees continue to photosynthesize and more energy and nutrients back to the roots allowing it to grow even more trees the root system of Pando got started an estimated 80,000 years ago while most of the actual above-ground trees are only about 80 to 120 years old so while all of the above-ground trees may be fairly recent the root system would qualify as one of the oldest organisms the earth has ever seen over this incredibly long time Pando grew to an area of 106 acres or 43 hectares covering this area are an estimated forty thousand individual tree trunks each one genetically identical and connected to one another through their roots each one more like a branch on a single tree than a tree in their own right altogether these tree trunks add up to make a single organism that weighs nearly 6,000 tonnes or just over 13 million pounds that's roughly two full-grown lynsee Creek trees 38 blue whales were almost a ninety seven thousand people on top of that it's thought that Pando used to be even bigger unfortunately for the past 30 to 40 years panda was thought to have started dying although not entirely certain why researchers expected to be a combination of factors including more frequent droughts caused by shifting climate increased wildfire suppression caused by human oversight and increased cattle grazing encouraged by humans as well yep this one's our fault even still though panda remains the most massive organism to have ever been discovered by humans nearly twice the size of the biggest single stem tree on earth but that doesn't mean there aren't still physically bigger organisms out there that might not be nearly as heavy as panda but which spread out over greater total surface area an example of this can be found in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea not in the United States throughout the sea lives a grass known as pasado knee of oceanic ax or just to Neptune grass this grass is a very similar strategy to Panda where it's the root system which survives and expands while producing expendable grass stocks where ever conditions are optimal usually patches of Neptune grass are small and diverse but south of the island of Ibiza lies a single patch all connected by a single root system all genetically identical that spreads out over a distance of 8 kilometres based on the observed growth rate of this seagrass it's predicted that this particular colony must be around 100,000 years old to have made it to this size making it potentially the oldest organism on earth as well but if we're talking about size and not mass we can get even bigger for this though we need to leave the realm of plants and enter a new one fungus to understand this one we need to learn a little bit more about the mushroom species our malaria Ostia so normally fungus feeds on dead organic matter left behind by plants killed by natural causes but this one is what you'd call a parasitic fungus meaning had figured out that if it could kill trees and then digest them it could control its own growth and no longer depended on chance deaths to support itself basically it's a cold-blooded killer that sets up camp on a single tree until it's dead from a root disease known as white rot and then consumes the remains ironically these are also known as honey mushrooms and there are said to be some of the tastiest mushrooms to scavenge for while the above-ground biomass of this fungus stays pretty small just a few mushrooms around the stump of a tree beneath the surface its roots called mycelium explode throughout the soil searching for new trees to infect most of the time trees have their own defenses against threats like this but when a bunch of trees in a single area don't the fungus which maintains all of its previous biomass beneath the soil even after it's done digesting the tree can grow to truly enormous sizes the biggest is to be found again also in the United States things really are bigger here this time in the state of Oregon in Malheur National Forest here the mycelium of a single fungus has come to encompass 890 hectares or 22 acres that's almost 21 times the area of panda the one tree forest surprisingly the estimates on the age of this humongous fungus are only around 2,400 years old far younger than panda or the seagrass bed by ibiza having definite start around 400 BCE it was around this year that the Olmec culture of Central America was coming to a mysterious end Romans were building their first aqueducts and many of the famous Greek philosophers were doing some of their best thinking all while the biggest organism on earth was getting its start amazingly however this fungal structure isn't actually all that heavy with estimates placing its total mass only around 605 tons or about one-tenth the mass of Pando or equivalent to only about 4 blue whales or nearly 10,000 people despite its low weight this fungal mycelium structure is the largest known single living organism we are aware of today so this is where we can go no further unlike Pando however this giant fungus has shown no signs of poor health and will continue to grow slowly spreading a parasitic death across Oregon growing in size until something stops it it's not really known just how large something like this can get and might be able to keep growing until there's nothing left to feed off of and if you're looking for a good science fiction book idea well here you go you can have it what I find interesting however is that the majority of these massive organisms can be found within only the United States why this is the case isn't really clear either but it's likely a combination of the Americas being spared from extremely high-density human habitation until recently allowing these organisms to persist without the threat of human interaction along with an abundance of well-educated researchers capable of noticing and recording such incredible natural wonders something like this giant mycelium Network is so easy to miss if not properly educated and it makes me wonder if there could be even larger more massive organisms located in places without so many educated people just waiting to be discovered man if I did sponsorships this would be a great time to roll in curiosity stream or like brilliant or something right yeah I'm not going to do that but as more countries accumulate greater populations of scientists and researchers maybe new discoveries will be made potentially pushing the limits on we thought life could accomplish or even what life really is maybe if something new is discovered I'll make a video on that as well to make sure I'm still around to make videos about things like this I'd suggest checking out my patreon like all of these people dead if not that's fine but maybe at least subscribe so you see any video I make in the future I should be back next week with another one thanks

Channel: undefined

Views: 482,999

Rating: 4.8900776 out of 5

Keywords: education, geography, science, atlaspro, biology, life, redwood, forest, california, usa, america, sequoia, pando, aspen, utah, oregon, fungus, ibiza, seagrass, neptune, grass, armillaria, ostoyae, whale, argentinosaurus, lion's, mane, jellyfish

Id: HXBlFXT70GQ

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2019