Blue whales are the biggest animals ever to exist on earth.
They can weigh upwards of 150 tons, which is more than the largest dinosaurs!
But the blue whale is not the biggest living thing.
That title goes to. . . . well, it depends on what you mean by "biggest"!
The tallest may be a California redwood nicknamed "Hyperion."
At a towering 115 meters, this giant is taller than the statue of liberty.
The most extensive organism is a very old "humongous fungus" that covers a whopping 2,385 acres in a national forest in Oregon.
At the base of the trees, bunches of "honey mushrooms" appear. . . they are the "fruiting bodies" produced by the fungus, which otherwise lives out of sight — imagine if apple trees grew underground and only the apples were visible to us!
That's basically what the fungus does, except that it spreads its "mycelia" not just through the soil, but also through the roots and bark of trees in the forest, attacking them and stealing their nutrients so it can continue spreading outwards.
However, if we're talking about the good old heaviest organism ever found, that prize goes to a giant panda living high on a Utah plateau.
