The fact that there were once extremely huge animals roaming the earth excites the imagination. Dinosaurs often come to mind when we think of the largest animals that ever lived. It may therefore come as a surprise to most people that the animal at the top of the list of the largest animals ever recorded still lives today. Sadly, though, it has become an endangered species, thanks to the activities of humans.

► Subscribe For New Videos! ► https://goo.gl/XPOHAZ

Watch our "10 Survival Stories That are Hard to Believe " video here: https://youtu.be/2s875d1VgjM
Watch our "10 Most Dangerous Sharks in the World" video here: https://youtu.be/2s875d1VgjM
Watch our "10 Abandoned Mansions Worth Millions" video here: https://youtu.be/cDtbenFGOfw

Number 10. The Southern elephant seal

At number 10 on our list is the Southern Elephant Seal, also known as the bottle-nose seal during the nineteenth century, a fearless sea carnivore. This seal gets its name from it huge size and massive proboscis of the adult males that looks like an elephant’s trunk. It uses its proboscis to produce loud roars, effective during the breeding season. The southern elephant seal shows high levels of sexual dimorphism, which is a condition that both sexes of an animal species show different characteristics beyond the differences of their sexual organs such as in size and looks.

The male southern elephant seal can grow to be five or six times larger than their female counterpart. A male, also called a bull, can weigh anything between 2,200 kg to 4,000 kg and are 15ft to 19ft in length, while the females weigh about 400 kg to 900 kg and 8.5ft to 9.8ft in length. A record-sized bull was shot in Possession Bay, South Georgia weighing 4,500 kg and 22.5ft long.

Southern elephant seals dive to depths of 1,000ft to 3,300ft to hunt their prey which are squid and other types of fish. A diving record for the seal was almost two hours and to a depth of 4,600 ft. A bull weighs more than twice a male adult walrus and six or seven times the largest living land carnivorans, the polar and Kodiak bears.

Number 9. African Bush Elephant

The largest living land animal in the world currently is the African Bush Elephant. They can be found in the Sub-Saharan areas of Africa. It can weigh between 3,600 kg to 6,300 kg. The male African Bush Elephant can reach a height of 11.5 ft, while the female can reach 9.8 ft and weigh about 3,000 kg.

The African bush elephants have massive tusks that can grow up to 8.2 ft in length and weigh 109 kg in males (called bulls) and only about 17.7 kg in females (called cows). The largest recorded tusk measured 11.5 ft and weighed 117 kg. Their trunks contains about 60,000 different muscles which they use in drinking, breathing, smelling, grabbing, and trumpeting.

There are two other species, the Savanna Elephant and the Forest Elephant, and they are listed as vulnerable animals.

Number 8. Steppe Mammoth

An interesting fact to note is that the elephants are a distant cousin of mammoths. The Steppe Mammoth roamed the earth about 400,000 years ago. Weighing between 8,000 kg to 10,000 kg, the Steppe Mammoth was recorded as the largest known mammoth species. Its height measured between 13ft to 14.8 ft.

An almost complete skeleton dating about 100,000 years old of a Steppe Mammoth was discovered in Russia by scientists in 2015. They estimate that it was a male which died at approximately 45 years.

Steppe Mammoths roamed across Eurasia where plains and large vegetation existed as that was the diet of these massive creatures. They had large, broad teeth that were adapted for grinding huge quantities of grasses at once. The strong tusks of a steppe mammoth can grow as long as 17 ft and were curved. The tusks of a male (called a bull) were very elaborate with the tips curved round such that it would start to point back towards the body. A pair of tusks were discovered in 2015 weighing 150 kg in total.

► Subscribe For New Videos! ► https://goo.gl/XPOHAZ

Follow Us On Social Media

Twitter https://twitter.com/FactsJunkieYT
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FactsJunkieYT

► For copyright issues, send us an email at : factsjunkie@gmail.com