Which is the largest land mammal in the world?
Largest Mammal The largest animal on Earth is the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus). Newborn calves are 6-8 m (20-26 ft) long and weigh up to 3 tonnes (2.95 tons). An adult whale can grow to a length of 35 m (115 ft) and weigh up to 130 tonnes. A female weighing 190 tonnes and measuring 27.6 m (90 ft 6 in) in length was caught on March 20, 1947. An even bigger 33.58-m (110-ft 28-in) long female landed in 1909 at Grytviken, South Georgia in the South Atlantic. Largest Land Mammal Largest mammal on land is the male African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) standing on average 3-3.7 m (9-12 ft) high at the shoulder and weighing 4-7 tonnes. The largest specimen ever recorded was shot in Mucusso, Angola, on November 7, 1974. Lying on its side, this elephant measured 4.16 m (13 ft 8 in) in a projected line from the highest point of the shoulder to the base of the forefoot, indicating a standing height of about 3.96 m (13 ft). Its weight was worked out to be 12.24 tonnes.
The largest land mammal is baluchitherium, extinct gigantic, hornless rhinoceros. The baluchitherium is the largest known land mammal ever to have existed, and is a direct ancestor of today’s rhinoceros. It ranged across central and western Asia during the Oligocene epoch 35 to 23 million years ago. A few bones of the baluchitherium were discovered by British paleontologist C. Forster Cooper of the University of Cambridge in the Baluchistan region of India in 1911. Cooper concluded that these bones belonged to a mammal larger than any known to exist previously, and that it probably was an early form of the rhinoceros. Additional discoveries by Cooper and other scientists over the next two decades, including a complete skeleton of a baluchitherium unearthed in Mongolia, confirmed his initial theory. An adult baluchitherium stood about 5.5 m (about 18 ft) at the shoulders, which were elevated above the hips. This animal had a long neck and long front legs. Its head, small in proportion t
