ZAP’S FACTS!
RIVERS & LAKES

Lake Baikal holds more fresh water than all the Great Lakes combined.

This Siberian lake is over 1,600 metres deep - the deepest lake on Earth.

2 min read
Lake Baikal holds more fresh water than all the Great Lakes combined.
THE FULL STORY

Lake Baikal in Siberia is the deepest lake on the planet, plunging 1,642 metres in places. It holds an absurd amount of fresh water - about one-fifth of all the liquid fresh water on Earth’s surface, more than the five Great Lakes of North America put together.

It’s also the oldest lake we know of. Baikal sits in a rift where two tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart, and water has been collecting there for around 25 million years. The lake is still getting deeper and wider.

Because Baikal is so old and so cut off, more than 2,500 species live there that exist nowhere else. The strangest is the Baikal seal, the world’s only entirely freshwater seal - nobody is quite sure how its ancestors got so far from the ocean.

The Grand Canyon was carved by a river - over six million years.
DID YOU KNOW? The Grand Canyon was carved by a river - over six million years. At 1.8 km deep it's not the deepest canyon, but it might be the most famous one. 2 min read
The Yangtze used to have its own species of freshwater dolphin.
DID YOU KNOW? The Yangtze used to have its own species of freshwater dolphin. Asia's longest river is so big it had unique dolphins - but they vanished in 2006. 2 min read
The Mississippi River sometimes flows backwards.
DID YOU KNOW? The Mississippi River sometimes flows backwards. Earthquakes and storms have actually reversed the river's direction more than once. 2 min read