Record-Breakers Of The Natural World

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The Largest…

The African elephant is the largest terrestrial animal (the largest recorded individual weighed in at 13.5 tonnes), and the ostrich is the largest bird (its eggs can weigh over 3 lb each).

The largest insect, on the other hand, is probably the goliath beetle, which can measure up to 110 mm and weigh up to 50 grams. And the secret to its massive size? Well diet, of course.

The goliath beetle eats rotting plants and animal dung. If that sounds disgusting, remember that eating the stuff no-one else wants has helped to make beetles the most successful species on the planet.

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The Largest (2)…

Predictably, the most massive living thing in the world is not an animal, but a tree. A Californian giant sequoia nicknamed General Sherman, to be exact, which is officially the largest known single organism by volume.

This monster is 272 feet tall with a trunk 33 metres in circumference at the base. To put that into some sort of perspective, it has been estimated that General Sherman contains enough timber to build 120 average size houses, and that it weighs the equivalent of 10 diesel locomotives.

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The Most Ferocious…

It’s a tricky category to judge, but you’d be hard pressed to beat the red-bellied piranha for sheer ferocity. As soon as the young piranha reach about 1.5 inches in length, they begin to feed on the fins and flesh of fish that stray too close.

When fully grown, they’ll eat (alive) pretty much anything that crosses their path. That usually means other fish, but it can also mean young heron that have fallen into the water while learning to fly, and human hands.

Piranhas have even been known to drag sickly cattle underwater. Occasionally, the feeding frenzy includes their own young.

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The Most Venomous…

Australian lifeguards can often be seen wearing women’s tights on their arms and legs, and not as some sort of macho joke (well, not usually). It might spoil the image a bit, but it could save their lives.

That’s because the potentially lethal sting of the box jellyfish - the most venomous creature on earth – is only triggered by direct contact with flesh.

The lifeguards have discovered that wearing hosiery can save them from excruciating pain, vomiting, breathing problems and even death. Painful humiliation is clearly a price worth paying.

The box jellyfish, pictured above, has trapped a banana prawn and reels the catch towards its mouth. The prawn died instantly from toxins released by the jellyfish's stinger capsules.

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The Oldest…

The oldest verified human being was Jeanne Calment of France, who lived to the ripe old age of 122. The world’s oldest tree, on the other hand, is a mountain spruce in Sweden, which so far has lived to the riper old age of 9,550 and is still going strong. To put that into perspective, the civilisation that built Stonehenge lived around 5,000 years ago, and Julius Caesar just over 2,000 years ago. The tree hails from 7,542BC, give or take a decade or two.

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The Best Jumper…

It’s not the kangaroo, an exotic frog, or even the famous flea. No, the world’s best jumper is the froghopper, also known as the spittle bug. This spring-healed critter is 6mm in length and can leap up to 70cm vertically. Which means that if the froghopper was a human being, it could leap over skyscrapers and we’d call it Superman. Even more astonishing is the initial acceleration of the froghopper’s hop, which reaches a jaw-dropping 4,000 metres per second.

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The Greatest Endurance…

In 2007, a female bar-tailed godwit made the longest non-stop bird migration ever recorded. It managed the 7,145 mile trip from Alaska to New Zealand in nine days, without a single break for food or water.

By the end of the trip, the brilliant bird had lost more than half of its body weight, and had survived by sleeping on the wing - shutting off half of its brain at a time while keeping the other half wide awake. All in all, the journey was the equivalent of a human running non-stop at 43.5 miles per hour – for more than a week.

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The Best Underwater Marathon…

In 2005, a great white shark called Nicole (named after Australian actress Nicole Kidman) made a nine-month, 12,400 mile circuit between Africa and Australia.

Nicole swam further than any other known shark, and the return leg of the journey set a second record: the fastest return migration of any known marine animal.

Of course, humans also swim between distant foreign lands, but the 19 nautical miles that separate England and France aren’t quite in the same league.

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The Fastest Swimmer…

The sailfish is officially the word’s fastest fish, reaching speeds of 69mph in short bursts as it herds schools of sardines or anchovies together for easier feeding.

By comparison, Olympic swimming hero Michael Phelps reaches speeds of around 6mph, and that’s for even shorter busts. Whether Phelps has ever used his speed to herd anchovies is not officially recorded.

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The Fastest Runner…

Everyone knows that cheetahs are the fastest mammals, but how fast do they run? Well, scientists have clocked the big cat running at up to 70mph, which means that the fastest cheetahs can reach the speed limit on a British motorway (providing they don’t get stuck in a traffic) and outrun the fastest human without breaking sweat.

Usain Bolt won the 100m title in Beijing this summer with an average speed of 23.08mph.

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The Fastest Flyer…

The Peregrine Falcon cruises at about 50mph, which is pretty fast, and dives at 200mph, which is quicker than a starving man spotting a doughnut. It’s all part of the bird’s remarkable hunting technique.

Peregrine Falcons dive-bomb unsuspecting birds flying below them, and use the impact of the collision to kill their prey in mid-air. Such blink-and-you-miss-it aerobics require a super-keen eyesight, and the Peregrine Falcon’s is seven times more powerful than ours.

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The Strongest…

As you might imagine, elephants are pretty strong. Their trunks alone are made up of 100,000 muscles and can lift up to 600 lbs in weight. That’s nothing, though, compared to the rhinoceros beetle.

It might only weigh 20 grams, but it can lift up to 850 times its own bodyweight. By comparison, the puny elephant can only lift the equivalent of about a quarter of its hefty bulk.

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