At first sight can seem that the longest animal on Earth logically is the biggest of all nowadays existing creations – a blue whale which length reaches 35 meters. However it at all not so!
Instruction
1. The longest animal on Earth is the tape-worm. Its Latin name – lineus longissimus. This externally unpleasant creation can reach in length of 60 meters. It turns out that the huge tape-worm is longer than the largest animal on Earth (blue whale) twice.
2. The body of the longest creation in the world is very thin – no more than 1 centimeter in the diameter. This being has one unique feature: it can be extended so that without effort breaks all imaginable and inconceivable records on length. In other words, in the quiet and weakened state this worm reaches about 30 meters, but once it begins to be extended, its length reaches already 60 meters. In such state this worm resembles a long plait superficially.
3. Young individuals of these creations are painted in olive-brown or dark-brown color, and adults – in henna-red or in black. The huge tape-worm lives at sea coasts in northwest Europe, around the British Isles, in northeast Atlantic and also along the Norwegian coast to the Northern and Baltic seas.
4. The longest animal on Earth is both a predator, and a deathbird. However if to judge by the speed of its movement, then lineus longissimus more likely a deathbird, than a predator. This creation is quite gluttonous. The worm catches the victim as follows: he shoots at it a long tubule on which there are sticky and poisonous hooks.
5. Lineus longissimus moves by means of muscular reductions of the body (as well as other worms). The zoologists watching movement of the longest worm in the world noted: during movement it contracts, stretches almost twice! Muscles of a tape-worm perform also one more function: they pump over its blood. The fact is that the huge tape-worm (as well as at all other worms) has no heart therefore these beings are considered as primitive organisms.
6. The very first description of this species of tape-worms is dated 1770th year. Lineus longissimus was described by the Norwegian naturalist Johan Gunnerus as Ascaris longissima. Zoologists classify tape-worms as lowest hearts. Now about one thousand species of these animals are described. It is curious that most of them lives in the seas, but not in coastal zones as it does the most long animal in the world.