Uncertainty and worry are plaguing a small Canadian fishing village: Earlier this week, a blue whale carcass (80-feet long) washed up at the village’s shores. The dead body bloated as it filled up with methane due to decomposition. It’s now already doubled  in size and it’s feared the carcass could explode any time. And no, it’s not funny at all as a Faroe Islands biologist could easily confirm.  In November 2013, Faroese Television showed a clip of a dead sperm whale that had been lying on the beach for two days. When biologist Bjarni Mikkelsen made incisions in the whale’s side, the carcass exploded with a loud sound and released a pungent smell. But, the story doesn’t have to end this way – the gas could also simply seep out just like helium from a rubber balloon.

1. Tuatara
Tuatara is not only a living fossil that is around since about 200 million years. The lizards are of great interest for evolutionary studies because they have some incredible features such as a photoreceptive eye (the “third eye”), or their ability to hear, although no external ears are present. Most interesting for this list is their lifespan – Tuatara can become upto 200 years old.

2. Bowhead whale
Reaching an age of 200 years is nothing if you are a Bowhead whale. The oldest ever discovered was said to be 211 years old. The whale can grow upto 20 meters in length and reach a weight of 75 to 100 tonnes. As it lives in Arctic and sub-Arctic waters it‘s also known as Arctic whale.

3. Tortoises
Of course there are tortoises. We all know that they can become very old. They are actually considered to be the longest living vertebrates on Earth. But there are examples that scores off all the others. Harriet, a Galápagos tortoise died of heart failure at the age of 175 years in 2006. It was on the boat with Charles Darwin during his epic voyage. But maybe there‘s another record: An Aldabra giant tortoise named Adwaita is said to be died an age of 250, also in 2006.

4. Black coral
We stay in the water for a 4th example of extremly long-living creatures. Deep down in the ocean we will find Black corals. These tree-like corals with a almost black skeleton normally occur in the tropics. Now hold your heads: In 2009 scientists released research-results on those corals. And they said that they discovered specimens of the Black coral that reached an age of around 4,265 years. One reason is that these corals grow very very slow.

5. Creosote bush
That brings us to the king of long-lasting species. It‘s a bush ring in the Mojave Desert and it has it‘s kingness written in it‘s name: King Clone, a Creosote bush ring is estimated to be 11,700 years old. That‘s like wow. Who will beat that? The battle is going on for… some other millennia.

 

1. The American Pygmy Shrew (Sorex hoyi)

With a pulse clocking in at more than a 1000 per minute, the smallest mammal in North America really needs lots of food to keep its phenomenal metabolism going. Every day it eats three times its own weight. To do so it needs to constantly eat and never sleeps for more than a few minutes. An hour without food would mean certain death. But this high-octane life style takes its  toll – the 5 cm long animals typically live barely a year.

2. The Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus)

As the largest animal ever to have lived you’d expect the blue whale to be a good eater. 30 meters long and weighing some 170 tons, it eats up to 3,6 tons of krill (a type of plankton) a day. That’s equivalent to a daily intake of 1.5 million Calories – or about 6000 Snickers bars.

3. The Humming Bird (Trochilidae)

With its heart beating up to 20 times a second during hovering flight, humming birds need lots of food to maintain their phenomenal flight engines powering their wings which can flap up to 80 times a second. They eat up to twice their weight in nectar every day making them not only the hungriest birds but the hungriest animals outside the insect realm.

4. The Giant Weta (Anostostomatidae)

With a span of up to 18cm and a weight of 70 grams, this creepy crawly is considered the largest insect in the world. Here’s a specimen that is officially the largest on record – discovered by a former park ranger on new Zealand’s Little Barrier island. And it is very hungry indeed. The news item shows it attempting to gobble up a carrot. The park ranger added: “She would have finished the carrot very quickly, but this is an extremely endangered species and we didn’t want to risk indigestion.”

5. The Star-Nosed Mole (Condylura cristata)

If you are hungry, you want to eat. Quickly. By that measure the star-nosed mole must be one of the hungriest animals around – because it eats faster than any other mammal. It , both, finds and swallows its food typically in less than a quarter of a second. Which is about as fast as you blink.