- Get your magnifying glass ready because things are about to get tiny.
How small can you get? Pretty dang small, as nature has shown us.
The thing about tiny animals is that we don’t often think about them. After all, they’re so minuscule that we barely notice them.
So, what are the world’s tiniest creatures? Here are 9 of the world’s smallest animals in multiple categories.
Smallest Mammal — Bumblebee Bat
The smallest mammal in the world is the bumblebee bat (also known as Kitti’s hog-nosed bat). This tiny, tiny bat grows up to be about 1.3 inches long at its largest and weighs merely 0.07 ounces on average.
Bumblebee bats are found only in a series of limestone caves in Thailand. Despite their size, the bats are hunters that use their sharp teeth to catch even tinier insects.
We do have to give a shout-out to the Etruscan shrew, though. Although its body is a bit longer than the bumblebee bat’s, the shrew weighs even less — only about 0.05 ounces.
Smallest Insect — Fairyflies
The world’s smallest insects belong to fairyflies, a family of wasps. You will never see them, though, because some of these bugs are smaller than bacteria.
Dicopomorpha echmepterygis has the honor of being the tiniest known insect. These wasps have an average body length of only 0.0055 inches.
Here are a couple of fun facts. Fairyflies are some of the most common wasps but we never notice them since they’re microscopically small.
Additionally, they’re cruel parasites. Fairyflies lay their eggs into the eggs of other insects, acting as natural pest controllers.
Smallest Fish — Photocorynus spiniceps (male)
The world’s smallest known fish — and potentially the smallest vertebrate overall — is the male of the anglerfish species Photocorynus spiniceps. These fish grow to be a mere 0.3 inches long at their largest.
The females are much bigger, though, averaging about two inches in size. Like with most other anglerfish, there’s a sexual reason for the size difference.
Male Photocorynus’ only purpose in life is to find a female and bite onto her. His body then shrivels up until he’s nothing but a sack of testes supplying sperm to the female when she feels like procreating.
Smallest Bird — Bee Hummingbird
No one could blame you for mistaking the bee hummingbird for an actual bee. The males of this world’s smallest species of birds grow to be only 2? inches long, while the females are marginally larger.
Like bigger birds, the bee hummingbird still lays eggs. They’re appropriately tiny as well — a bee hummingbird egg is about the size of a coffee bean.
As a curious fact, the bee hummingbird is at the same time the smallest dinosaur. Birds are dinosaurs’ direct descendants, after all, and paleontologists haven’t found fossils from anything smaller.
Smallest Lizard — Jaragua Dwarf Gecko
The Jaragua dwarf gecko is simultaneously the world’s smallest lizard and smallest reptile. These lizards measure only 0.71 inches from the snout to the tip of their tails (and that’s a huge dwarf gecko) while weighing only 0.005 ounces on average.
Jaragua dwarf geckos’ habitat is equally tiny. They live only on Beata Island in the Jaragua National Park in the Dominican Republic.
There, the dwarf geckos make their home in the leaf litter of the forest floor. This species was discovered only in 2001.
Smallest Spider — Patu digua & Patu marplesi
There are a couple of contenders for the title of the world’s tiniest spider, but they both belong to the Patu genus of dwarf orb weavers. The candidates are P. digua and P. marplesi.
P. digua is generally considered the smaller one, with a body length of 0.015 inches. P. marplesi isn’t far behind, though, with a body length of 0.016 inches.
Frankly, differences this tiny may just be due to natural variation between individuals. As a curious fact, the two spider species don’t live anywhere near each other — P. digua is found in Colombia while P. marplesi inhabits the island of Samoa.
Smallest Amphibian — Paedophryne amanuensis
The world’s smallest amphibian and frog is Paedophryne amanuensis from Papua New Guinea. With a body length varying between 0.28 and 0.31 inches, they also compete with Photocorynus spiniceps for the title of the tiniest vertebrate.
Like with many other small frogs, the life cycle of P. amanuensis doesn’t include a tadpole phase. Yet, like much larger frogs, it feeds on insects and other invertebrates.
It can jump too — and it jumps well. P. amanuensis can leap up to 30 times its body length, the equivalent of an average human male jumping 172 feet.
Smallest Snake — Common Blind Snake
The world’s smallest snake is the common blind snake. Living in Africa and Asia, these tiny slitherers — between 2 and 4 inches in length — are often mistaken for earthworms.
But if you look closely enough, you can make out the snake’s scales and eyes. That’s right — despite their name, the snakes do have eyes.
Those eyes are almost completely useless, though. The snakes like to live in ant or termite nests, where they can find an easy source of food.
Smallest Primate — Madame Berthe’s Mouse Lemur
Finally, we come to primates — the order of mammals that also includes us humans. Here, the tiniest representative is Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur from Madagascar.
The lemurs grow to be roughly 3.6 inches in body length and weigh about 1 ounce. They eat fruits and insects, while occasionally also catching lizards.
These lemurs are strangely bipolar when it comes to social interactions. For some reason, when they meet their fellows, they’re just as likely to cuddle up as they are to start a fight.
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