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 prehistoric animals monotreme (egg-laying mammal) ever was the extinct long-beaked echidna species known as "Zaglossus hacketti", known from a couple of bones found in Western Australia. It was the size of a sheep, weighing probably up to . The largest cingulate known is "Doedicurus", at long and reaching a mass of approximately "Glyptodon" easily topped and . The largest-known animal of this group was "Deinogalerix", measuring up to in total length, with a skull up to long. It occupied the same ecological niche as dogs and cats today. The largest-known prehistoric lagomorph is Minorcan giant lagomorph ("Nuralagus rex") at . The largest-known