The top 5 longest-living animals on Earth

People's pursuit of longevity is from the heart, ordinary people hope to "live a long life", while the Emperor Han Wu pursued "immortality"! But human life has its own set time, at a certain age, will be "helpless to grow old", without exception!

But as humans strive to live to 100, the five oldest animals on Earth are already sniggering. Because their life spans range from 500 years old to over 10,000 years old! Comparing human life expectancy with the five longest-lived animals on Earth is a bit of a dilemma! Even the long-lived creatures we know, the tortoise and the Greenland sleeping shark, can't compete with them!

Is it really that amazing? Don't you believe it!

The FIVE longest-lived animals on EARTH, with a minimum life span of 500 years and a maximum immortality

According to Sciences.com, the top five longest-lived animals on Earth range from 500 years old to as old as 500 years, because they may be immortal! The five longest-living animals are: 5. Arctic clams, over 500 years old; 4. Black horn coral, over 4000 years old; 3. Glass sponge, over 10000 years old; 2. Turritopsis turritopsis, which may not die; 1. Hydra may live forever!

The shortest of the five oldest animals on Earth is the Arctic clam, a mollusk that lives deep in the Arctic. It is only 500 years old! In the course of their research, scientists have found that cold water helps Arctic clams maintain a low metabolic rate, making them grow very slowly and thus delaying the aging process!

The most famous Arctic clam is Ming! The biologists originally estimated the age of the shell to be 407 years old based on the markings. Because the markings were not very clear, the scientists opened the shell, dated the internal markings, and finally corrected the age to 507 years. Finally, the C14 isotope was used to recheck the age to within 1-2 years! But alas, the arctic clam, which was born in the Ming Dynasty, died due to careless manipulation by scientists.

Although the Arctic clam already lives far longer than most animals on the planet, it's a pretty young death compared to the top four. The top 2 turritopsis and hydra will live forever if they are not eaten, infected with disease, or starved of food! In the middle, "black horn coral" and "glass sponge" can live for more than 4,000 and 10,000 years respectively. Such a long life has amazed countless people!

A clam

Two, these five animals so long, is there any hope of human immortality?As sharp-eyed friends have surely discovered, these long-lived animals are all "aquatic"! So a lot of people wonder: if we live in water, will we live longer? Although the wish is good, but this is a bit overthinking, although human beings are also originated from the sea, but today's human beings, have no conditions to re-enter the water -- after all, human beings in the water for a long time, will die!

But scientists have also come up with three secrets to animal longevity: slow growth, regeneration and rebirth!

An example of bradygrowth is the Arctic clam. Arctic clams live in the cold depths of the sea and have cells that metabolize very slowly to live a long life, but there's still no evidence as to why they metabolize so slowly that they can stop aging.

polyps

A typical example of regrowth is the hydra. The secret of hydra is that its body is mainly composed of stem cells, which gives it the super ability to regenerate and live forever! Stem cells are a kind of infinite or immortal cells, which can self-renew and proliferate without limit! Biologists at Pomona College in the US studied 167 polyps for eight years. The results showed that polyps do not age and can reproduce all the time!

Best of all is the reborn turritopsis turritopsis. When the turritopsis encounters danger, starvation, or other external changes, the adults reverse their growth, retract themselves into their droplet cysts, and go through the developmental process all over again, becoming a watery mother! Italian scientists have subjected more than 4,000 jellyfish to a variety of lethal mutations, but none of them died, and all of them grew old again! This is an incredible skill, can self-cycle "egg chicken chicken egg"!

The five longest-lived animals on Earth have unique life skills that are truly the envy of humans. But all of them are simple and low-grade creatures, often unable to escape the food of various fish, and do not live to the age they should!

The lighthouse jellyfish

Three, 10,000 years old, is it real? A lot of people don't believe it

Seeing an animal so far older than usual, most people wondered, is there a mistake? After all, the maximum human life span is just over 100 years, and the history of human civilization is only 5,000 years old! A 10,000-year-old glass sponge, too far beyond human understanding of life, is it true? Although we can't believe it, scientists can determine the age of these animals with the same scientific method as dating cultural relics over thousands of years or rock formations over hundreds of millions of years!

Underwater coral

Scientists have three tools to determine the age of the five oldest animals on Earth: tree rings, carbon isotopes and otoliths!

Tree rings: To the surprise of many, many animals have ages, too! Animal "tree rings" can also indicate age as well as tree rings. For example, the Arctic clam "Lao Ming", which was killed by scientists, grows a texture about 0.1 mm thick every year, which accumulates over the years, allowing scientists to visually analyze the age!

C14: carbon 14 isotope dating is commonly used in archaeological and geological analysis, but also in biological analysis. C14 is a method for measuring the age of organic matter and inorganic matter containing carbon, which is developed by using the stable decay rate of carbon isotope C14. For example, biologists using C14 measurements of the eye lenses of Arctic sleeping sharks combined with growth rates have estimated that the sharks are between 272 and 512 years old, give or take 120 years.

Otolith: otolith age measurement is rarely heard. Otolith, also known as auditory stone, is a special limestone stone in the auditory bubble, which is found in many animals and used to feel the balance of the body. As an animal ages, concentric rings, like "tree rings," appear in the center of the otolith, and the number of rings indicates age! Marine fish and invertebrates are mostly aged this way.

Glass sponge, also known as Venus flower basket

As a result, the ages of the five oldest living animals on Earth are reliably determined with little error and high confidence. As for hydra and turritopsis, they don't have an age, do they? They are forever young by the divine skills, any way of measuring the age is not applicable!

Since these animals all live so long, if humans could one day solve the mystery of any one of them, wouldn't the wish for "immortality" come true? Shall we live, or shall we die?