You are listening to An Ounce, Season 6, episode 29, The Biggest Living Thing You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.
Pretty crazy that something, so incomprehensibly big, can sometimes go so completely unnoticed. And with other things they can appear so enormous that we can’t see anything else… but in fact are of little real consequence.
Like that little mustard stain on your shirt. Seriously, have you ever had a conversation with someone that has a little stain on their shirt – a yellow spot that is so loud, in spite of it being half the size of a dime, you can’t hear what the person is saying.
Or, perhaps you have been the one that has the stain. And you can’t understand why everyone you talk to seems so distracted. Until you go to the restroom to regain your composure and see it there – screaming at you -through the reflection in the mirror. That Little Yellow Stain.
Truth is that stain is no big deal – a little club soda – and voilà – it’s gone.
But there are some things that really are so big they take your breath away – like the view from the Empire State Building, or an overlook at the Grand Canyon.
So, let's dig in a little deeper-
If I were to ask you, “What is the biggest living thing ever? What is the largest individual living thing that has ever existed on this earth?”
How would you answer?
There are some great candidates.
The Elephant. That is definitely a big one. They can top out over 12,000 pounds (6 tons), and close to 12 feet tall. At birth, the baby elephant is about 3 feet tall – and weighs 220 pounds or more.
And there are a few different varieties of Elephant. You have the Asian Elephant, African Savanna Elephant, and the African Forest Elephants. And in the past there were the even larger relatives like the Wolly Mammoth and the Mastodon.
But nope - Elephant – Not the biggest
SO how about the blue whale? That thing is massive. They weigh in a bit shy of 300,000 pounds, or 150 tons – just under 100 feet long. And, what do they eat to keep up that mass? A teeny tiny little shrimp called krill – around 40 million of them every day.
Blue Whales - They are massive for sure – but not the massive-est
Was it one of the Dinosaurs then? Surely one of those gigantic monsters was the biggest. But no, not even the Titanosaur Patagotitan Mayorum. If truth be told, it is not as big as the Blue whale. Though this gargantuan dinosaur might outstretch the whale in length by about 20 feet – it kind of a cheat as this four-legged plant eater had a long thin tail that stretched out to that 120 foot mark . But for sheer mass, their 70 tons doesn’t quite tip the top of the scale compared to the whale's almost 100 tons.
Hold on! Some of you are saying – plants are living organisms. How about one of those?
Well, you’ve got a point. Tom Volk, a biology professor at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, agrees with you. He explains that a living organism could be considered, “one set of genetically identical cells that are in communication with one another that have a sort of common purpose or at least can coordinate themselves to do something.”
So, with a definition like that, the largest living organism must be one of the Giant Redwoods in Sequoia National Park. And, some of those are quite impressive and really big – but there is another “living organism” that is even bigger.
Humungous Fungus
In the Malheur National Forest, in central eastern Oregon, around the vicinity of the clear creek and Reynolds creek, there lives a behemoth so big that will blow your mind.
It is a thing that grows at 1 to 3 feet per year, and it lives for a very long time-in some cases over 8 millennia (or 8 thousand years). There is more than one of them out there in the world. The biggest one we know of has been named the “Humungous Fungus”. It is an… Arm or ella…, Arm er leck..., Armillaria Ostoyae fungus that envelops 2,385 acres, and weighs in at a minimum of about 8,000 tons, and as high as 35,000 tons (depending on factors such as the weight of the bios mass it is consuming, and moisture levels that are present).
It is a fungus comprised mostly of a massive network of root like tendrils, or filaments, that spread beneath the surface of the soil. Every once in a while, this gigantic organism will sprout up out of the ground at the base of a fir or pine tree as Honey Mushrooms. These mushrooms are a cream to light brown in color and reach up to 4 inches tall, and spreads out as much as 5 inches. But these mushrooms are not individuals – they are like the leaves of a single enormous underground tree.
What does an entity that covers over 2000 acres eat?
It eats a forest.
It eats trees. Ground falls mostly. But it also goes after pine and fir trees – even the big ones. In fact, if you go to Oregon’s Malheur National Forest to visit the Humungous Fungus – or one of its 3 or 4 other brothers or sisters that live in the same area – you’ll want to learn to recognize which trees might be getting ready to fall as they are consumed by Armillaria Ostoyea.
That is right, the Humungous Fungus, and 4 of its siblings, are eating a whole forest. That seem like it’s a pretty big deal – and a whole lot of destruction.
But, not like you might think. As it happens slowly, over a period of many years, and left behind is a rich soil for new trees to sprout up.
Well, there are potential several little nuggets of wisdom that might be found in the comparison of a mustard stain and the world’s biggest living organism. But for now, let's just focus on 1.
So, here's’ An Ounce.
It seems that -big and small - really are qualities that are defined by perspective. So, when you find yourself overwhelmed by what seems to be a really big deal – well, It’s not always easy - but perhaps you can find hope, strength, peace, and even solutions by working to find a different perspective.
And, that’s it. An Ounce, submitted for your consideration.
