Biggest Animals by Category

Forgot the polar bear...thinking of animals on the savannah.

Me too, totally brainfarted on the bear department.

Great quiz.

I'm just appalled that only 20% of people got capybara! You hear that name repeated like 20 times, just in 2nd grade.

I never heard it before the 2nd season of The Tick.

Not in New Zealand.

Only just heard of it now.

Judging by the replies, no

I think squid should be accepted. I know there might be different-sized varieties, but colossal squid is hard to get.

Agree. Python worked for reticulated python so why not squid for colossal squid?

Woohoo 100 percent!!

Great Quiz :)

I knew capybera but couldn't spell it. :( I even tried "Speak," which was The Tick's pet capybara's name.

This time I got it. Only missed sturgeon.

I always thought the Irish Wolfhound was historically the largest dog breed.

I tried that too. But I think the Irish Wolfhound is the tallest dog breed, not the largest in terms of weight.

i think great dane is the tallest

Can anyone tell me the difference between colossal squid, giant squid, and architeuthis?

The colossal squid, which still has not been seen alive in its natural habitat, is thought to be even larger than the giant squid (although its tentacles are shorter). The largest known colossal squid was hauled to the surface by fishermen off New Zealand in 2007. It weighed around 1,000 pounds. Unlike the giant squid, whose arms and tentacles only have suckers lined with small teeth, the colossal squid's limbs are also equipped with sharp hooks: some swivelling, others three-pointed. Its body is wider and stouter, and therefore heavier, than that of the giant squid. Colossal squid are believed to have longer mantles than giant squid, although their tentacles are shorter. The squid exhibits abyssal gigantism. The beak of M. hamiltoni is the largest known of any squid, exceeding that of Architeuthis (giant squid) in size and in robustness. So that's the difference between colossal and giant. Architeuthis is easy. It's the giant squid's genus, and is often simply said to mean giant squid.

Yeah I seen it in the museum in Wellington.

swivelling hooks? My goodness..

Go mastiffs! I have two at my house

You mean they have you at their house!

How many kids did you used to have?

I tried Manuel Uribe for largest land carnivore.

This is why I love scrolling though JetPunk comments

Well, there's nothing else that starts with Komodo so I kinda agree. Komodo is also a island in Indonesia, which would kinda be like saying "Sumatran" for a Sumatran tiger :)

I was a tad disappointed that ROUS wasn't accepted as a correct answer.

Lol beat me to it

Please accept Comodo Dragon...

A Commodoe Dragon? Very elusive. Usually you only see those the morning after a heavy dinner at PF Chang's. And it's rare that one weighs in at over 3 Courics, much less 366 lbs.

Well oof, that wouldn't work because Komodo is an island in Indonesia and you can't really change that..

I always write Komodo with a 'C'. Annoying, but it's a good thing it's not accepted; perhaps this way I will learn to spell it correctly one day.

Fun fact: hybrids of blue whales and fin whales are rare but can actually grow larger than blue whales, and unlike most hybrids they are fully fertile because blue and fin whales have the same diploid number :-)

The hybrid's size is intriguing, because it seems to have a growing capacity more similar to the Blue whale. Immature hybrid specimens have been found to be larger than fully mature fin or blue whales. I know this was noticed in at least one quite old publication: (Cocks, 1887), but sadly they are very rare in general and still being hunted, so there are too few to do a really comprehensive analysis. But in theory they could be the largest animals of all time :-)

It seems 'imprinted genes' play a role in this, much like why Ligers are larger than Tigers.

Very fun quiz. Liger got me though.

Yeah, ligers are gigantic ngl (they grow larger than their parents)

If you enjoyed this you might like my fastest animals quiz, sort of in the same vein.

900-pound, non-wild cat? Sounds like Garfield.

I thought a Liger was something that lived only in Napoleon Dynamite's imagination.

A liger is the hybrid offspring of a lion (male) and a tigress. They grow larger than both of their parents (9.8 - 11 ft in length)

It should be mentioned somewhere that this quiz does not include extinct animals.

You should accept Komodo with a C for idiots like me that cant figure out that it starts with a K.

LOL! Now THAT'S the way you register a gripe, people!

lolz

The largest waterfowl is actually the Mute swan and the largest bird of prey is the Andean condor.

Source links:

http://www.hbw.com/species/mute-swan-cygnus-olor#Taxonomy

http://www.hbw.com/species/trumpeter-swan-cygnus-buccinator#Taxonomy

http://www.hbw.com/species/andean-condor-vultur-gryphus#Taxonomy

http://www.hbw.com/species/cinereous-vulture-aegypius-monachus#Taxonomy

Oh, and I typed Komodo dragon, but I think Komodo monitor should also be possible (yes, I retook the quiz to try if it works).

Makes me think of a commodore (64) monitor.... haha I have got some weird images now.. (a monitor with saliva dripping teeth and a long tail..)

By the definition of a species (Darwin) a liger is not an animal because it cannot produce its own offspring making it infertile

Is it a plant then?

oh nu ligers are not plants they're lion and tiger hybrids XD

Whether an organism is fertile or not has nothing to do with what kingdom it's in.

I believe Hippopotamus should be the biggest for land carnivore. If you say its an omnivore, so is a brown bear. If you say its not a land animal, neither is the polar bear.

Hippos are herbivores

Yeah..hippos are herbivorous..

Yeah, a hippo may attack and kill you, but it won't eat you.

Can you put sizes in metres and kilograms, please? There are approximately 196 countries in the World and approximately one of them still uses pounds and feet to measure things.

To be fair, liberia and burma/myanmar still don't use the metric system either. (I looked it up, didnt know that either and think few do unless they life close. i.e africa or east asia)

But yea, kilograms and (centi)meters should atleast be added alongside

While I agree that the metric system would make more sense, both due to widespread use and the logic of the system itself, I don't think that knowing the specific weights is necessary to find the answers in this quiz.

Biggest animal in the world? Don't need to know how much it weighs, it's a whole lot

Confirmed records: 343 pounds - English Mastiff vs. 210 pounds - St. Bernard. Claims of even bigger dogs exist.

Imperial units......ergh.

Trying to do this quiz with imperial units is like hell. Please add metric units. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! I get that this website is American but 192 countries use the metric system and that should be the primary system of measurement on a website like this on which people from many countries take timed quizzes.

What's your source for this? Specifically I'm curious about the Andean Condor versus the Eurasian Black Vulture. I've always heard/read that the Andean Condor is the largest bird of prey, and a brief search of Google listings seems to bolster that view. The List of largest birds article on Wikipedia has a section on birds of prey that appears to give both birds the top status, depending on how they are classified.

Dammit I missed polar bear, because I thought of the german "Eisbär" which lead me to think it's "ice bear". Could you maybe accept that? Pretty please?

How is condor not the biggest bird of prey?

Yeah, I thought the Andean condor was the largest bird of prey ;-;

and it's 2021 in New Zealand

Maybe do both, until we can figure this out.

Since you accept Elephant, and Gorilla, can you accept Bear and Shark?

There are only three species of elephant, which take up the top three spots on their list. There are two species of gorilla, which take up the top two spots on their list. Meanwhile, there are eight species of bear, with only the two at the top of their list (the rest beaten out by some of the big cats.) And there are over 500 species of shark, many of which are quite small (some less than a foot long!), so you definitely need to be more specific there.

Yeah, it was a dumb suggestion.

Very interesting, I wasn't expecting to get some of the ones like mastiff, liger, and lobster. I got sturgeon because I was reading about caviar today

Because of my word choice error, I'm now picturing a large lizard wearing a Kimono

I think expanding this idea a little would be fun, you could make a Picture quiz for this and a Multiple Choice

As several people have pointed out in the past 5-ish years, the heaviest bird of prey is the Andean Condor, at 33 pounds, not the Eurasian Black Vulture, at 31 pounds.