Here we would imagine some kind of whale or jellyfish. But in fact, the longest animal on the planet is a completely different living organism. Although he lives in water, as mentioned above.
Let's take a closer look at it …
The longest animal in the world is the tapeworm Lineus longissimus, which can reach a length of sixty meters. It is twice as long as a blue whale and 1/3 as long as a hairy jellyfish. Tapeworms belong to the group of lower worms, nemerteans, which in Greek means "sea nymph".
In total, about a thousand species of such worms are known, and, mainly, these are marine inhabitants. The bodies of these worms are very long and thin; they can be only two millimeters in diameter. These worms have the unique ability to stretch out to their full length, which allowed these worms to take the highest line in the ranking of the longest animals in the world.
If the body of the worm is not elongated, it most often reaches a length of about 30 meters, but as soon as it stretches out, the length increases to 60 meters, thus it resembles a huge long cord.
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The body of a tapeworm is loaded with muscles that pump blood because it doesn't have a heart. These animals are considered the most primitive enough organisms, but at the same time, tapeworms are dangerous predators, and besides, they are also gluttonous. To catch its prey, the animal shoots a long tube with sticky, poisonous hooks.
Many of these worms do not differ in color from the darkness of the ocean depths, but there are some that differ in bright colors. Tapeworms have the ability to recover from damage, some of them even reproduce by division into parts.
By the way, the largest animal in the world is just the blue whale, the length of which can reach 33 meters, and still it is very far from the tapeworm.
This tapeworm lives in the waters of the Atlantic off the coast of Norway and the British Isles.
Based on the age of the fossil remains, the tapeworm has lived on Earth for at least 500 million years.