Animal Hall of Fame: Biggest

Follow this slideshow to see images of and learn about the worlds' largest land and marine mammal, bird, fish, reptile, and insect.

Land mammal

African elephants weigh up to 14,000 pounds and can eat as much as 600 pounds of food a day! Their trunks contain as many as 100,000 different muscles.

Marine mammal

The blue whale is the world's biggest animal, even larger than any known dinosaur. An average-sized adult is 80 feet long and weighs about 120 tons. This giant is also the loudest animal on Earth. Its call, which is louder than a jet, can be heard for hundreds of miles.

Bird

The ostrich can grow to 9 feet tall and weigh as much as 350 pounds. Its eggs, the largest of all birds, weigh up to three pounds. These flightless birds can sprint up to 43 miles per hour.

Fish

The whale shark, which is not a whale, reaches about 33 feet in length and weighs up to 60 tons. These fish prefer warm water and inhabit tropical seas. Don't let their size scare you! They are tame creatures that have let swimmers ride on their backs.

Reptile

The saltwater crocodile can grow to 23 feet long and weigh up to 2,200 pounds. Often called "salties," the ferocious reptiles are found in India, Southeast Asia, and northern Australia.

Insect

Giant walking sticks can grow to about 20 inches length. They protect themselves from predators by using camouflage to blend into their environments.

Marie Sklodowska Curie

Nobel Prize in Physics, 1903 and Chemistry, 1911

Marie Curie is considered the most famous of all women scientists. She was the only woman ever to win two Nobel Prizes. Prohibited from higher education in her native Poland (then controlled by Russia), she moved to Paris in 1891 and studied at the Sorbonne. In 1903 her discovery of radioactivity earned her the Nobel Prize in physics. In 1911, she won it for chemistry.

Irene Curie

Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1935

Irene Curie was the daughter of Marie Curie. She furthered her mother's work in radioactivity and won the Nobel Prize for discovering that radioactivity could be artificially produced.

Gerty Radnitz Cori

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1947

Gerty Cori studied enzymes and hormones, and her work brought researchers closer to understanding diabetes. She won the Nobel Prize for discovering the enzymes that convert glycogen into sugar and back again to glycogen.

Photo source: D.H.H.S.

Barbara McClintock

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1983

Barbara McClintock studied the chromosomes in corn (maize) and her work uncovered antibiotic-resistant bacteria and a possible cure for African sleeping sickness.

Maria Goeppert Mayer

Nobel Prize in Physics, 1963

Maria Goeppert Mayer researched the structure of atomic nuclei. During World War II she worked on isotope separation for the atomic bomb project.

Rita Levi-Montalicini

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1986

An Italian neuroembryologist, Rita is known for her co-discovery in 1954 of nerve growth factor, a previously unknown protein that stimulates the growth of nerve cells and plays a role in degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease.

Photo source: National Library of Medicine

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1964

Dorothy discovered the structures of penicillin and vitamin B(12). She won the Nobel Prize for determining the structure of biochemical compounds essential to combating pernicious anemia.

Photo source: Library of Congress

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1977

Rosayln Yalow won the Nobel Prize for developing radioimmunoassay, a test of body tissues that uses radioactive isotopes to measure the concentrations of hormones, viruses, vitamins, enzymes, and drugs.

Photo source: Library of Congress

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1995

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard won the Nobel Prize using the fruit fly to help explain birth defects in humans.

Photo source: Rama

Linda Buck

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2004

Buck and fellow American Richard Axel discovered how the olfactory system---the sense of smell---works and how people are able to recognize and remember more than 10,000 odors.

Photo source: Roland Morgan

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2008

French virologists Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS.

Photo source: U. Montan

Carol W. Greider

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2009

In their research on telomeres (the ends of chromosomes), molecular biologists Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn co-discovered the enzyme telomerase and how chromosomes are protected from progressive shortening by telomeres and telomerase.

Photo source: U. Montan

Elizabeth H. Blackburn

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2009

In their research on telomeres (the ends of chromosomes), molecular biologists Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider co-discovered the enzyme telomerase and how chromosomes are protected from progressive shortening by telomeres and telomerase.

Photo source: U. Montan

Ada E. Yonath

Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009)

Israeli crystallographer Ada E. Yonath, along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz, studied the structure and function of the ribosome–the organelle that makes protein from amino acids. Ada E. Yonath is the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize.

Photo source: U. Montan

May-Britt Moser

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2014)

Norwegian neuroscientist May-Britt Moser, along with John O'Keefe and Edvard I. Moser, won the Nobel Prize for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.

Photo source: Henrik Fjørtoft/NTNU Communication Division