Relative to its size, the world's strongest animal is the dung beetle, which can lift over 1,100 times its body weight, though the African bush elephant can lift the most weight among animals.

A collection of fascinating facts about the planet and its creatures

You may have already heard that cheetahs are the fastest animals on land, but did you know that Savannah elephants are the strongest? This page on the World Wildlife Fund's UK website features a diverse range of articles on mammals, underwater creatures, birds, reptiles, insects, and landscapes. Discover captivating information about Earth and the creatures you share it with.

Possessing trunks that contain about 40,000 individual muscles, African elephants act as keystone species by trampling and clearing trees, making pathways in forests, digging water holes, and spreading seeds.

Large animals like giraffes and elephants have evolved unique cancer defenses.

Identify household beetles with this database

Beetles are the largest order of insects in the world, with over 400,000 described species. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, and in every habitat imaginable, from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains. A small percentage...

The deep-sea fangtooth has the largest teeth of any marine species relative to body size

From transparent fish to the heaviest worms on the planet, these seven creepy creatures lurk in the deep sea. Learn all about them and the unique traits that help them survive and hunt.

How to carry more than your own bodyweight

Those images showing a villager carrying an enormous bundle on their back, or balancing a basket of fish on their head—how's that possible? This article dives into the clever tools and habits of strength training some cultures employ as part of their labors, from the springy bamboos used by Vietnamese farmers to the headbound burdens of Himalayan sherpas.

Mosquitoes top the ranking of the world's deadliest animals.

Some animals seem to live well on little sleep

African bush elephants typically sleep for about 2 hours per 24-hour day, coming in well under a human's recommended seven-hour minimum. Other animals also appear to skimp on sleep, by human standards, without the consequences humans associate with being sleep deprived. This academic article details the sleeping habits of animals that appear to thrive on fewer than 40 winks and explores whether their sleep processes are just built different.

Research suggests ants are the most abundant insect on the planet, with an estimated 2.5 million of them for every human on Earth.

Visualizing the 75 largest underwater animals

With so many fish in the sea, which are the largest? This infographic shows fantastic illustrations of the 75 largest sea animals, ranked by average size. The detailed visual is organized in descending order of size, starting with the blue whale,...

Meet the new baby Asian elephant at the Fort Worth Zoo

Born on April 1, 2026, the 285-pound calf named Sam Houston was on his feet within six minutes of birth and nursing within an hour. He is the largest calf in zoo history and the fourth generation of an elephant family that has called the Fort Worth Zoo home.

Dinosaurs ranged from the size of chickens to multistory buildings, with one of the largest, Argentinosaurus, spanning about 39 meters (128 feet) and weighing more than a Boeing 737.

Environment and genetics explain why animals have widely different lifespans

Both environmental conditions and genetic factors shape how long various animals live. For some creatures, colder conditions allow for less energy use and slower aging. Larger animals have fewer predators. While humans don't live the longest, we are a rare species that successfully lengthened its average lifespan over time.

View a breakdown of the identified species on Earth, led by about one million insect species, while mammals such as humans make up one of the smallest groups.

The giant African harvester ant is rising in popularity as a pet and fueling illegal global trade, with creatures sometimes costing as much as $220.

See photos of a 200-pound Burmese python is captured in Florida

Conservationist Mike Elfenbein and his son, along with three other hunters, captured a massive 198-pound Burmese python in Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve in the fall of 2023. See images of the hunters and their prey here.

Serbian donkey cheese is the most expensive in the world, with prices sometimes reaching up to $600 per pound.

The world's largest species of marine algae is giant kelp, which can grow as much as two feet per day from depths of about 100 feet up to the ocean surface.

What we know about the mysterious colossal squid

The colossal squid, the world's largest invertebrate, remained hidden from human discovery until nearly a century ago. Explore the world of the enormous and mysterious creature, including its features, habitat, and scientific significance. You can even plan a visit to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and marvel at a real-life display.

Watch wild elephants 'mourn' their dead

Wild elephants in Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya visited their dead matriarch's body weeks after her death and displayed behaviors that researchers are hesitant to call "mourning" though they do believe the animals are displaying a specific reaction in response to the death. The video shows elephants using their trunks to touch and explore the carcass while standing in place for extended periods, which is uncommon for the animals.

The ‘humongous fungus’ may be the largest organism on Earth at more than 2,300 acres

Discovered in 1988, when it was only covering 400 acres, this massive colony of Armillaria ostoyae, based in Oregon, has taken hold among the tree roots of the Malheur National Forest. It consists of a vast network of unique long black filaments of fungal tissue called rhizomorphs that grow under the soil and infect tree roots, nourishing the fungus but killing the trees. Researchers believe this fungal growth dates back more than 8,000 years and currently weighs approximately 35,000 tons.

Uncovering the evolution of history's largest dinosaurs

This article details how sauropods—the dinosaurs that Little Foot would call longnecks—repeatedly evolved to attain such colossal sizes, towering over other land critters, including tyrannosaurs and mammoths. Sauropods were giant, long-necked...

Although ecologists have struggled to identify a species as a keystone—one of outsized importance to its ecosystem—an analysis of 50 years of data and 157 studies identified 230 such species.

Why do humans have such long childhoods?

Humans have over twice as long childhoods than other animals with similar lifespans like whales and elephants. A human child can grow for nearly 20 years before they become a reproducing adult. Researchers believe there's a connection between long childhoods and human's unusually large brain size, though the science is not totally clear. Dive into what scientists know here.

South American lungfish has the largest animal genome, with 91 billion base pairs

This genome is 30 times larger than a human's due to significant amounts of "junk DNA" and jumping genes, or transposons. Transposons can jump or copy over to other parts of a genome and may aid adaptation.

Across the animal kingdom, parenting can include adults carrying their young, providing their bodies for sustenance, searching for food and shelter for their children, and separating siblings who may eat one another.

At any given time, there are an estimated 10 quintillion individual insects alive on Earth.

Some mosquitoes are key pollinators—and eat disease-carrying mosquitoes.

These animals are only found in the Amazon rainforest.

The mighty Amazon River and its surrounding rainforest is home to millions of different species of animals, with new ones being discovered regularly.

A collection of the world's best live animal cams

What are the animals up to? If you're too busy to get to the zoo today, you can take a quick glance at this site, which aggregates dozens of live feeds of animals from around the world. See elephants, bald eagles, and puppies all in one place—but...

Georges Cuvier used his knowledge of anatomy to prove extinction had occurred

Extinction had been viewed as impossible because a divine plan for the world would not rationally involve the loss of any of God’s creations. However, mammoth and mastodon bones differed from elephants’, and it seemed impossible that such creatures could be hiding elsewhere on Earth.

Hysterical strength allows someone to lift a car off their child

When the body responds to an acute crisis—say a family member trapped under a car—people can sometimes perform seemingly superhuman feats. This is more than an urban legend: In 2012, a 22 year-old-woman lifted a vehicle off her father, and seven years earlier another man lifted a vehicle off a trapped cyclist. Yet scientists are still unraveling details about why this can occur.

The jaguar is the largest feline in the Americas and serves as a keystone species by acting as an apex predator with a diverse diet across multiple environments, thereby regulating the populations of dozens of species.

T. rex needed the same amount of calories as 80 people every day

Tyrannosaurus rex is the most extensively studied fossil creature ever known. Every year, new research is added to the towering list of papers that try to draw …

Zoo animals have developed allergies, too

Although scientists do not know if allergies manifest among wild animals—and if animals can survive with them—in a zoo setting, veterinarians have observed zoo animals with common allergy symptoms, including itchiness, crusty skin, and runny eyes. Veterinarians have identified Asian elephants with pollen allergies and at least one jaguar with an allergy to fleas.

The Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested

In 1961, the Soviet Union detonated AN602—known as the Tsar Bomba—the largest nuclear explosion in history. Newly released Russian footage starkly illustrates the unmatched destructive power of this nuclear weapon.