which animal on earth has the longest life span
tortoise
title: Aldabrachelys gigantea arnoldi text: subspecies. Giant tortoises are among the longest-lived animals on the planet. Some individual Aldabra giant tortoises are thought to be over 200 years of age, but this is difficult to verify because they tend to outlive their human observers. Adwaita was reputedly one of four brought by British seamen from the Seychelles Islands as gifts to Robert Clive of the British East India Company in the 18th century, and came to the Calcutta Zoo in 1875. At his death in March 2006 at the Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) Zoo in India, Adwaita is reputed to have reached the longest ever measured title: Largest organisms text: one of the largest and oldest clonal colonies on Earth. Among animals, the largest species are all marine mammals, specifically whales. The blue whale is believed to be the largest animal to have ever lived. The largest land animal classification is also dominated by mammals, with the African bush elephant being the most massive of these. The largest single-stem tree by wood volume and mass is the giant sequoia ("Sequoiadendron giganteum"), native to Sierra Nevada and California; it typically grows to a height of and in diameter. Multiple-stem trees such as banyan can be enormous. Thimmamma Marrimanu in India spreads title: Tortoise text: animal, and some individuals are known to have lived longer than 150 years. Because of this, they symbolize longevity in some cultures, such as China. The oldest tortoise ever recorded, and one of the oldest individual animals ever recorded, was Tu'i Malila, which was presented to the Tongan royal family by the British explorer Captain Cook shortly after its birth in 1777. Tu'i Malila remained in the care of the Tongan royal family until its death by natural causes on May 19, 1965, at the age of 188. The record for the longest-lived vertebrate is exceeded only by one other, title: Largest organisms text: photosynthetic unicellular and multicellular protists that are related to land plants. The thallus of the unicellular mermaid's wineglass, "Acetabularia", can grow to several inches (perhaps 0.1 to 0.2 m) in length. The fronds of the similarly unicellular, and invasive "Caulerpa taxifolia" can grow up to a foot (0.3 m) long. A member of the order Cetacea, the blue whale ("Balaenoptera musculus"), is thought to be the largest animal ever to have lived. The maximum recorded weight was 190 metric tonnes for a specimen measuring , whereas longer ones, up to , have been recorded but not weighed. The African bush title: Animal text: 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