Antarctica's largest year-round land animal is about the size of a grain of rice

Belgica antarctica, a wingless midge just 2-6mm long, is the largest permanent terrestrial resident of Antarctica — nothing bigger lives there year-round. Its larvae survive losing nearly 70% of their body water and freezing solid for most of a two-year larval stage, then cram their entire adult life, mating included, into roughly two ice-free weeks.

— J.S. Edwards; later work by David L. Denlinger, Richard E. Lee Jr., Physiological and metabolic aspects of cold hardiness in Belgica antarctica — Various, Antarctic entomology research