Animal including salt water, hydrothermal vents, fresh water, hot springs, swamps, forests, pastures, deserts, air, and the interiors of animals, plants, fungi and rocks. Animals are however not particularly heat tolerant; very few of them can survive at constant temperatures above . Only very few species of animals (mostly nematodes) inhabit the most extreme cold deserts of continental Antarctica. The blue whale ("Balaenoptera musculus") is the largest animal that has ever lived, weighing up to 190 metric tonnes and measuring up to long. The largest extant terrestrial animal is the African bush elephant ("Loxodonta africana"), weighing up to 12.25 tonnes and
Downward to the Earth Downward to the Earth Downward to the Earth is a 1970 science fiction novel by American writer Robert Silverberg. It is a tale of the quest for transcendence (a frequent Silverberg theme) set on another planet, and includes references to "Heart of Darkness", Joseph Conrad's classic tale of colonialism, including the name of Kurtz. Its title references Ecclesiastes 3:21 in the Bible (""Who knows if the spirit of people rises upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth?""). "Downward to the Earth" was originally published as a four-part serial publication, starting in the November 1969 edition of