Today we've got something special for you, a close look at one of the things that makes

science really fun.

What are the biggest, the oldest, and the most dangerous living things?

But even more interesting are all the details we have to consider to pick the winner in

each category.

It's a project that dramatically shows off the incredible diversity of life on Earth.

And we're doing that right now, Unskeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid, I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

The biggest, the oldest, and the baddest.

Yes, I know the correct grammar is worst, but when you're talking about a creature that's

bad, worst just doesn't have the right pizazz.

What's good enough for Leroy Brown is good enough for the plants and animals best able

to kill us.

Today, we're going to look at the baddest to the bad plants and animals out there, as

well as the biggest of the big and the oldest of the old.

More importantly, we're also going to study how we know and how we differentiate.

The process of learning is almost always just as exciting as the conclusion.

Word of warning, there's a lot of incorrect information about this subject on the internet.

If you're going to double check any of these, or look for examples that are bigger, older,

better, be very careful and double or triple check your sources, I did my fallible best

to verify all of these and had to exclude unverified claims from virtually every category.

The biggest.

...