The longest animal on Earth might not be the blue whale

Siphonophores like Praya dubia can stretch over 40 metres — longer than a blue whale — though each one is actually a colony of thousands of genetically identical, specialized clones called zooids working as a single organism. In 2020, researchers off Australia filmed one estimated at around 45 metres coiled in a spiral, among the longest animals ever recorded.

— Standard zoological accounts, Siphonophorae — Schmidt Ocean Institute expedition, 2020