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
Largest organisms elephant ("Loxodonta africana"), of the order Proboscidea, is the largest living land animal. A native of various open habitats in sub-Saharan Africa, this elephant is commonly born weighing about . The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1974. It was a male measuring from trunk to tail and lying on its side in a projected line from the highest point of the shoulder to the base of the forefoot, indicating a standing shoulder height of . This male had a computed weight of 12.25 tonnes. The heaviest living animals are all cetaceans, and thus also the largest