What's the smallest animal on Earth? – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.hey it's Esther want to see something cool you're looking at one of the world's smallest drones it's called the piccolissimo and it would definitely fit in your pocket it's the size of a quarter whoo someone named Brady is curious about something else that's really small something that's actually alive let's give Brady a call now hi es hey Brady I have a question for you what is the smallest animal on Earth ooh that's a great question a lot of animals are really small these animals are small but that's because they're all babies but when scientists try to answer this question they're looking at which animal is the smallest when they're all grown up can you think of any animals that fit that description before I go on I'm curious what do you think is the smallest animal on Earth now would be a good time to pause the video and discuss okay you ready believe it or not this isn't an easy question to answer there are just so many animals in the world to choose from and a lot of them are pretty tiny when they're all grown up like this one this is a Tasmanian pygmy possum pretty small right pygmy possums like this one are smaller than the Crayons you use at school and remember that's when they're all grown up being tiny is a good thing because it helps them hide from predators and lets them navigate through the forest in Australia where they live the Tasmanian pygmy possum is the smallest possum in the world but guess what we can go even smaller than that see this animal it's an rusin shrew one of the smallest land animals by weight in the world it only weighs 1 and2 G that's about the weight of a paper clip or a raisin incredible now if we're only thinking of fuzzy animals the kind that have arms and legs to help them walk around then the atrus and true might win the prize for smallest animal on Earth but wait a second not all animals look like that in fact some of the tiniest animals on Earth might not be what you expected like have you ever seen one of these zop Plankton live in the ocean and they're really small only a little bigger than the tip of your pencil and though it doesn't look like an animal it is like all animals zop Plankton have to find food to eat because they can't make their own food like plants can but they can't easily move on their own like a lot of animals they have to use the ocean currents to float around and find food like zop plankton there are a ton of tiny creatures that people might not recognize as animals at first like insects yep insects are animals too and they're some of the tiniest creatures of all and you find them in the most unexpected places I once rescued a cat from someone's garage and when I looked at its fur it looked pretty normal but then I looked closely and I saw something moving fleas fleas are so tiny I could believe how small they were if I hadn't looked closely I would have never found them fleas are so small that they can sneak into hard to get places to find food or hide like in another animal's fur but one of the smallest insects of all is even smaller than a flea it's called a fairyfly and it's so tiny that it can fit on the tip of a needle the fairyfly is one of the smallest flying creatures on Earth but even though it can fly it sometimes chooses not to instead it likes to hit your ride on the back of a butterfly to get around and it's so small that the butterfly doesn't even notice okay the fairyfly is definitely one of the smallest animals on Earth but to find the smallest animal of all we'll need to look under a microscope see those dots moving around those are actually animals called mixis shekele it's a relative of jellyfish and it's so small that if you put 1,000 of them end to end the line would only be as big as a paperclip wow many scientists think the mix aola shekele is the smallest animal on Earth for now but there are so many tiny animals out there that it's possible that a new and even smaller animal will be discovered in the near future pretty cool so in summary the smallest animals on Earth aren't just the fuzzy ones with arms eyes and legs to get around like the Tasmanian pygmy possum or the tresin Shrew the world's tiniest animals don't look like that at all like zop plankton in the ocean or insects like fleas and fairyflies and the smallest animal on Earth at least for now the mixis shekele that you can only see under a microscope that's all for this week's question thanks Brady for asking it now we'll be back with a new episode in a couple of weeks but in the mean time here are some older questions from the question jar you can vote on which one you think we should send out next week you can choose from why do we get hiccups do fish sleep or why do we have leap years so submit your vote when the video is over we want to hear from all of you watching there are Mysteries all around around us stay curious and see you next week