Original subtitles

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