10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

Categories: Animals | Science

Not just long-livers, but super-centenarians. On our planet there live such creatures for whom even a century is not enough!

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

Radiated turtles hold the record for officially documented age among reptiles. The turtle Tui Malila, according to legend, given to the chief of the island of Tongo by Captain Cook, lived 188 years, dying in 1965. Radiated tortoises are found only in Madagascar and are critically endangered.

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

Bowhead whales were originally thought to live for about 70 years. But then harpoon tips from the early 19th century were discovered in the body of one of them! Other studies based on the study of amino acids in the eyes and teeth of whales have confirmed these data - bowhead whales can live more than 200 years, which makes them champions among mammals.

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

Arctica islandica mollusks look like ordinary shells. But appearances are deceiving - after counting the rings on the shell of mollusks, biologists found that they live over 300 years. The prize for longevity went to a mollusk named Ming - 507 years. This is an absolute record among organisms that do not live in colonies.

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

In 2003, the scientific community was stirred up by the discovery of a colony of the fungus Armillaria solidipes (dark honey fungus) over 2,400 years old. The mushroom is located underground, occupying about 5 square kilometers, and is considered one of the oldest inhabitants of the Earth.

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

Intermontane bristlecone pine is a relatively small conifer that often bends at odd angles. Unpresentable appearance does not play any role, given the ability of these pines to live for millennia. The oldest tree discovered, named Methuselah, is 5,062 years old—in fact, it is the same age as many of our oldest civilizations.

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

Larrea tridentata is a shrub whose leaves have medicinal properties. In 1970, Frank Vasek discovered that the ring-shaped bush in the Mojave Desert was a single organism—a so-called “clonal colony.” The branches of a bush can only live for a couple of hundred years, but the root system is almost eternal.

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

In the mid-1990s, a group of scientists announced that they had been able to revive a colony of bacteria extracted from 40-million-year-old bees entombed in amber. In 2000, the same thing was done with 250-million-year-old bacteria from salt crystals. These claims have yet to be verified. The officially confirmed age of the bacterial strain is still amazing - 34 thousand years.

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

A colony of clones is the surest path to immortality, and the aspen poplar clearly realized this. Individual poplar trees live no more than 130 years, but a clonal colony known as Pando has been around for 80,000 years, constantly growing new “children.”

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

Posidonia is a plant from the genus of “sea grasses” that grow in the Mediterranean Sea. DNA samples taken from one of the species of posidonia - Posidonia oceanica - showed that a plant colony can live from 100 to 200 thousand years. The existence of this centenarian is seriously threatened by global warming and development of the seashores.

10 Amazing Organisms That Live Incredibly Long

Many jellyfish start out as nonmotile polyps, but Turritopsis is the only one capable of reverting. If they are threatened with death, including from illness or old age, Turritopsis simply return to the polyp stage, budding off new clones.

And this cycle can go on forever.

Post News Article

Recent articles

Aesthetic apocalypse as it is: 22 examples of lousy design
Aesthetic apocalypse as it is: 22 examples of lousy design

Everyone can easily imagine what a modern, smart and attractive design is. Therefore, we will not talk about it, but we will show ...

Absurd Palace of Bubbles, fascinated with Pierre Cardin
Absurd Palace of Bubbles, fascinated with Pierre Cardin

In a world of many unusual and even strange buildings, but if you rank them, the Palace of Bubbles (Palais Bulles), created by ...

20 ways to artistically arrange snowdrift
20 ways to artistically arrange snowdrift

It happened in my life that snow is coming, regardless of our unwillingness to knead ice porridge on the way to work. Even the ...