Ravenous, famished, starving. We all have hungry days, but are you ever 4 tonnes of seafood hungry?

Let’s be honest, the blue whale, giant of the seas and the largest living animal on Earth, beats everything when it comes to a big appetite. On a daily basis, this leviathan gulps down 40 million tiny crustaceans known as krill to maintain its bulk.

But there are other animals with a reputation for supersizing their meals, and some of them might surprise you.

An African elephant (Loxodonta africana) mid-meal (Credit: Denis-Huot/naturepl.com)

Like the blue whale, giant land animals have appetites to match their impressive stature. According to African elephant expert Norman Owen-Smith of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in South Africa, adult males eat around 1% of their bodyweight in dry mass every day, while lactating females eat up to 1.5% to keep themselves going.

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