25 Smallest Things You Won’t Believe Actually Exist

The SwissMiniGun Miniature Revolver C1ST is no bigger than a key but is capable of firing tiny bullets at over 270mph. The first ones were made in 2005, are outlawed in the United States, and cost about $6,200.

Standing at just 2 ft 9 in. and weighing in at 21 pounds, Aditya “Romeo” Dev of India held the record for world’s smallest bodybuilder. He maintained that title until his death in 2012. Dev could shoulder press two 3.5 pound dumbbells as part of his workout routine.

Also known as the dwarf lizard, the Jaragua Sphaero is the world’s smallest lizard and is typically found in Jaragua National Park in the Dominican Republic. It’s a type of gecko first discovered in 2001. It was immediately declared an endangered species. It measures .6-.8 inches long.

Weighing only 150 lbs, the Peel 50 is the smallest car ever approved for street use. Built in the 1960’s, they are now rare cars that can go for $170,000. 

Weighing less than a newborn, Einstein is the world’s smallest horse that isn’t affected by dwarfism. Born in 2010, this stallion is fully grown, measuring two feet tall, just a few inches taller than Thumbelina, another small horse whose height is due to dwarfism. 

Barrie Drummond is the only inhabitant of Cass, New Zealand, a railway town in the Selwyn District. However, he is hardly lonely since curious tourists are constantly stopping by to visit the isolated stop. As a result, Drummond has added a mini golf course and bowling alley to attract more visitors to keep him company.

Created by Wu Ruishen, the smallest teapot in the world weighs in at only 1.4 grams. This ceramic piece of tiny pottery was constructed in 2007 and travels throughout various museums in China.

Sark Prison, found on the Channel Islands between England and France,  was built as a girl’s school in 1841 and was converted into a tiny prison in 1856. It has since aided in securing enemy soldiers during various wars and now is used to hold publicly intoxicated seasonal workers on its grounds from time to time.

Native to the tropical rain forests of South America, the pygmy marmoset tops out at a weight of only 4 ounces. It is the result of two species that have evolved into one over the last three million years. These animals have been plagued by disease in recent years, making them vulnerable to becoming an endangered species.

Abbreviated WSPS, the World’s Smallest Postal Service in San Francisco transcribes your mail into a miniature version before sending it. Established by Lea Redmond in 2008, Leaf Cutter Designs sends the tiny packages containing the requested miniaturized letters in the regular mail by request. They can transcribe messages in several languages and even send tiny gifts, like chocolates and toys.

In 2012, researchers in Papua New Guinea discovered a frog measuring .27 inches long, making it the world’s smallest vertebrate. Its name is the Paedophryne amauensis, and it was discovered while recording frog calls and following an unfamiliar call which sounded more like an insect. They were led to the leaf litters on the forest floor where they were well-camouflaged and became the first non-fish to obtain the title of world’s smallest vertebrate.

The World’s Smallest House is a title given to an Airbnb lime green mobile home that you can rent for $55 a night in Boston. Built by artist Jeff W. Smith, the house is on wheels and contains a stove and toilet, though no electricity. Smith will deliver it to wherever you like, as long as it is permitted by the owners of the grounds.

A female Chihuahua named Milly from Puerto Rico was born in December 2011 and measured 3.8 inches  tall when she was deemed the World’s Smallest Dog by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2013. Her owner, Vanesa Semler, gave her the official name of Miracle Milly.

Mill Ends Park in Portland, Oregon is the world’s smallest park at barely two feet across. It was created by journalist Dick Fagan after he saw a light pole removed from the median outside his office that was never replaced, causing weeds to build up in the spot. He planted some flowers there instead and wrote a piece featuring a story about how the park was constructed for a leprechaun colony. It has remained there since its dedication on St. Patrick’s Day, 1948. At one point, it even housed a swimming pool, statues, and a miniature Ferris wheel.

Recently discovered in an acidic Indonesian peat swamp, females of the Paedocypris progenetica, a member of the carp family, only grow to be 7.9 mm long. They live in acidic waters and have a see-through body with a tiny vertebrae and unprotected skull. After being discovered in the past decade, it has already been revealed that the species is in danger due to damage caused to their habitat by forest fires and deforestation. 

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Chandra Bahadur Dangi, from Nepal was 1 foot, 7 inches tall, making him the world’s smallest who ever lived. He died in 2015 at the age of 75. The title then passed on to Khagendra Thapa Magar from Nepal who measures at 2 feet, 2 inches.

Essentially nothing more than a phone booth, the town of Carrabelle, Florida, lays claim to what used to be the world’s smallest functioning police station. It was constructed in 1963 to dissuade citizens from using the police call box to make long distance calls and keep the officers from getting wet while making calls when it was raining. However, the calls, along with vandalism and weather damage, continued to occur. The original has since been moved and is on display in the Chamber Office.

Born after only 26 weeks in utero, a little girl born in Witten, Germany in 2016 is known as the world’s smallest premature baby to survive. Weighing in at 8 ounces and 8.6 inches, Emilia Grabarczyk came into this world in 2016 and beat the odds through surgeries and setbacks to flourish as a healthy-sized baby just nine months after her birth.

Suffering from dyslexia and other learning disabilities, Willard Wigan never excelled in school but found solace in creating miniscule artwork that could barely be seen by the naked eye. Working under a microscope to capture the desired details, some of his materials include pieces of matchstick, nylon tags, and grains of rice. The final product can typically fit into the eye of a needle. 

Cheryl Moss from South Africa constructed the world’s smallest teddy bear in 2006. Named Tiny Ted, this bear measures at 4.5mm and can fit within a human fingernail. You can visit him in the Teddy Bear Museum in South Korea.

The parasitic bacterium Mycoplasma Genitalium that inhabits the genital and respiratory tracts of primates is widely considered by scientists to be the smallest organism capable of independent growth and reproduction.

Although there is still some debate about what is considered “alive” and what isn’t, most biologists would not classify a virus as a living organism due to the fact that it cannot reproduce or metabolize by itself. A virus, however, can get much smaller than any living organism, including bacteria. The smallest is the single strand DNA virus, Porcine circovirus which measures only 17 nanometers across.

The smallest objects visible to the human eye are roughly .1mm long. This means that under the right conditions, you would be able to see an ameoba proteus, a paramecium, and even a human egg. Of course, the aid of a microscope is sometimes necessary to see these tiny objects, but as microscopes become more powerful, they are able to help humans see things that are even smaller, such as viruses and the insides of cells.

Over the last century, science has made great strides into understanding the vastness of space and its microscopic building blocks. When it comes to figuring out the the smallest observable particle in the universe, however, there is no clear definition. At one point, it was the atom. Then, scientists discovered the proton, neutron, and electron. It didn’t stop there, though. Today we know (by smashing particles together in places like the Large Hadron Collider), that these can be further broken down into even more particles like quarks, leptons, and even antimatter. The issue with trying to figure out which is smaller is that on a quantum level, size becomes a bit irrelevant as the rules of physics you are use to living by begin to break down. (Some particles have no mass; some even have negative mass, etc.) Unfortunately, trying to answer this question is like dividing by zero, not really possible.

String theory is a hypothetical explanation proposed by physicists to explain gravity. It suggests that all subatomic particles are composed of vibrating strings that interact in order to create forces like mass and energy. So, although these strings would technically have no physical dimensions, one could say that these strings would be, in some sense, the “smallest” objects in the universe.