Living Giants

Some of the
largest living
giants are
plants!

        When you read or hear that word "giant," what kind of a giant do you think of? A giant is something big, bigger than anything else of its kind. The biggest land animal, the elephant, is at least twenty feet long and weighs about six tons. Then there are other giants, like the Goliath beetle, giant of all the beetles. It is only four inches long, but that is four hundred times bigger than the smallest beetle. So, you see, some giants are bigger than you are and some are smaller. Then there are giants that are told about in fairy stories, such as Jack, the Giant Killer and those giants are only imaginary. But there are other giants that are real ones, like the dinosaurs, those great lizards that lived in the ancient times. Once upon a time they were really alive, and no doubt some of them were the largest of all the animals living then. These prehistoric creatures were sometimes eighty feet long and could weigh as much as forty tons.

       But there are giants today even bigger than the prehistoric dinosaur, and they are just as fascinating as those fossil giants or stories about mythical giants. Do you know that the largest living things today are trees? They are the redwoods and big trees (sequoias). One big tree, called The President, is probably the world's largest tree. It is located in Sequoia National Park and is 267.4 feet high and 107.6 feet in diameter at its base. The tallest tree was a redwood, called Hyperion, it fell in 1991. At 379.7 feet high it grew in Dyerville, California. A few of the giant eucalyptus trees of Australia rival the sequoias in height. Sequoias are very old. The President is between three and four thousand years old, while the biggest redwood is about twenty-two hundred years old. Sequoias are still living, still growing, and still the giants of all living things.

       Being the biggest of all its kind does not necessarily make anything the oldest or the strongest of its kind. For instance, the leather back turtle is the giant of all the sea turtles. It weighs about fifteen hundred pounds but it does not live so long as another smaller turtle, the giant land tortoise, which lives to be about two hundred and twenty-five years old. Think of it! An old land tortoise living now may have been born before George Washington! This tortoise has a longer life than any other animal living today.

       Some giants grow slowly. Redwood trees take at least one hundred years to grow two hundred feet in height, while another giant plant, the bamboo, grows as much as sixteen inches in one day and night. You can almost see and hear the bamboo grow.

       Do you know the giants of today? Can you name the biggest mammal, the biggest fish, the biggest snake, the biggest bird, the biggest lizard, the biggest turtle, the biggest grass? This list could go on and on because today there are many kinds of living things, and each kind has its own biggest that could be called its giant. The eight stories following this one will tell you more about some of these different kinds of giants. Wood.

• The Redwood Trees
• Blue Whales, Largest Of All Animals
• The Ostrich
• The Reticulate Python
• Whale Sharks
• Bamboo, The Giant Grass
• Giant Squids
• The Komodo Lizard 

 A giant sequoia named The President.

Another video here.