Well, there’s the Galapagos Giant Tortoise which is known to live to around 160 years, the oldest koi fish that can live to 200 years old, the rockfish that also live to over 200, and George the lobster, which was estimated to be about 140 years old in 2009. So if we were to look at “proper” animals (read: vertebrates), what would be the oldest one? Sure, they are technically animals, but they’re not invertebrates and we wouldn’t really associate them with the idea of animals. Of course, all the entries on this list feel a bit like cheating. So we’re not really sure just how old these jellyfishes really get in practice, but if one gets really lucky, it may very well be the oldest animal on Earth. It’s immortal, it’s just that it’s really hard to tell its age. In nature, it can still be eaten by predators, but as far as researchers can tell, this animal can go on and live indefinitely. It can do this indefinitely as long as it has the conditions to survive. After reaching sexual maturity as an individual, it can revert completely to a sexually immature colonial stage, and then start the cycle all over again - without anything changing. Turritopsis dohrnii is essentially immortal. Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish. However, there are a couple of animals that may be even older than this - in fact, they may be immortal. Research is still ongoing to better understand these creatures and exactly how long they can live. They tend to live in the frigid and shallow Antarctic waters, and they grow very slowly (which fits with a long life). We don’t know for sure, but according to our best estimates so far, these creatures can live 15,000 years or even more. It’s hard to say just how long glass sponges can live, but it’s probably over ten thousand years. A glass sponge: Venus’ flower basket, Euplectella aspergillum. The black coral Antipatharia in the Gulf of Mexico is also thought to live more than 2,000 years.īut another aquatic animal may have an even stronger claim. In her book The Oldest Living Things, Rachel Sussman also describes how she “met” a brain coral over 2,000 years old. Over many generations, the colony creates the large, characteristic exoskeletons we see in coral reefs.Ĭorals are also fairly easy to date with radiocarbon, and in 2009, researchers found the ages of two colonies were 2,742 and 4,265 years. Each polyp is a spineless animal (invertebrate) typically only a few millimeters in diameter and a few centimeters in length. Corals live in compact colonies, with each coral “head” being actually a colony of myriad genetically identical polyps. They don’t make their own nutrients through photosynthesis like plants, although they do rely on plant-like algae to help them through photosynthesis. Although they remain fixed in place, corals are animals. Some of the oldest animals we know of are almost certainly corals. The freshwater pearl mussel is another creature thought to belong in this category.īut is Ming the oldest animal we know of? The answer is, believe it or not, no.ĪDVERTISEMENT Corals are some of the oldest animals we know of. While more research is needed, researchers suspect that in the right conditions, clams like Ming can exhibit something called negligible senescence, meaning getting old doesn’t really change or affect them. They need the right environmental conditions (salinity, temperature), but if they have them, they can live on for centuries. In fact, fishermen routinely collect specimens that are a few centuries old, and if you eat clams, there’s a good chance you’ve also eaten one about as old as Ming. In 1868 one specimen, collected alive near Iceland, was 374 years old. But here’s the thing: Ming probably wasn’t an exception. It was initially thought to be 402 years old, but a more careful analysis found it to be over a century older.
Ming is an ocean quahog belonging to the species Arctica islandica, an edible, hard-shelled clam.
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