What’s the Deepest Canyon?

It all depends on where you’re looking, on Earth or in the entire solar system.

If you’re scouting for the deepest scar on Earth, it might not be where you think. Though the Grand Canyon is known for its majestic landscape, the deepest gorge on the planet is found where the Pacific Plate sinks underneath the Philippine Plate. Called the Mariana Trench, the underwater canyon descends 35,827 feet (10,920 meters) — the Grand Canyon only averages about 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) in depth.

But if you’re looking for the biggest known canyon in the solar system, that’s Mars’ Valles Marineris. It is the widest known canyon — in some places the space between its walls would span the width of the entire continental United States — and keep reach up to 10 times as deep as the Grand Canyon.

What is the Longest-Living Animal?

The animal with the most birthdays to date goes to a quahog clam plucked from the cold Icelandic waters in 2007. The tiny mollusk would need quite a lung capacity to extinguish the possible 400 candles on its cake.

 

Some life-span chart toppers include:

• American box turtle — 120 years
• Bowhead whale — 60 to 70 years (though bowheads exceeding 200 years have been reported)
• Elephant — 70 years
• Human — 70 to 80 years

Some animals are born and die in the seeming blink of the eye, including:

• Adult housefly — 4 weeks
• Worker bee — 5 weeks
• Ant (Worker) — ½ year
• Opossum — 1 year
• Ant (Queen) — 3 years
• Rat — 2 to 3 years

Is a Dog’s Mouth Cleaner Than a Human’s?

Well, sadly, no. In short, a dog’s mouth is besieged by its own legions of germs, roughly as huge in population as those living in the human mouth and causing a similar array of dental illnesses.