# Which species has the highest total weight **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 10, 2003, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681 "2003-09-10T03:59:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gscotb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b77776/32.png) [@gscotb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gscotb)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681/1 "2003-09-10T03:59:54Z")
Common sense tells me it’s got to be 1) something really small that 2) lives in the ocean. Is one of the phytoplankton the heaviest species on the planet? My little girl thinks I’m a genius – don’t let me tell her the wrong thing! ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681/2 "2003-09-10T04:06:03Z")
I’d say probably bacteria. Most likely one of the pervasive cyanobacteria that were some of the earliest cellular lifeforms. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681/3 "2003-09-10T04:25:44Z")
I don’t have a cite, but I once heard that the animal kingdom’s largest single-species (or would this be genus?) bioweight was made up by ants. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681/4 "2003-09-10T04:38:54Z")
Among multi-cellular animals, it is probably [Krill](http://www.polar.org/antsun/Sun111702/continent-t.html), a small shrimp-like sea creature that are the Nachos of the ocean: > [@](#): > > \*\*Estimates of krill abundance vary, but many believe that a sustainable krill harvest of around 150 million tons a year is possible. To put this enormous number into perspective, consider that less than 100 million tons of all species of fish and shellfish are currently harvested from the oceans of the world each year. “The biomass of this one species may be the largest of any multi-cellular animal species on the planet,” state Nicol and Clippingdale. \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681/5 "2003-09-10T05:47:43Z")
Angry whale chasing another whale away: “Nacho krill! Nacho krill!” ---
**Author:** ![Bob55](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Bob55](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob55)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681/6 "2003-09-10T06:06:27Z")
Could bacteriophages have a shot? Some fresh water ecosystems contain up to a billion tailed phages per milliliter, and around one million per milliliter in coastal seawater – the global population of tailed phages alone is calculated to be 10^30. Together all the phages in the world would outweigh the world population of elephants by a thousand-fold or more. My [cite was here](http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/224/Phages.html) when I wrote a paper on bacteriophages 3 years ago, but the page has changed a little since so the numbers don’t seem to be there anymore. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681/7 "2003-09-10T10:59:21Z")
Yes, but there might be ?millions of species of bacteriophage- we are looking at the heaviest individual species. Perhaps a common phytoplankton species would have a good shot; and then there are megatonnes of extremophile organisms living deep in the rocks of the Earth; how diverse these species are I haven’t a clue, but they might be contenders as well. ---
**Author:** ![woolly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ebca7d/32.png) [@woolly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woolly)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681/8 "2003-09-10T13:57:40Z")
A previous discussion on this topic is in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=91550) ---
**Author:** ![dinoboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/65b543/32.png) [@dinoboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dinoboy)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-species-has-the-highest-total-weight/200681/9 "2003-09-10T14:29:31Z")
> [@](#): > > and then there are megatonnes of extremophile organisms living deep in the rocks of the Earth I agree with **eburacum45** ; considering the vast expanse of their environment underground, an arceobateria species has got to be a good contender.