It’s a Greenland shark. This time, it was thousands of kilometers from its habitat. The oldest animal in the world reappeared, demonstrating that its longevity persists.
Longevity, that condition that can sometimes make us believe that death has forgotten some. It causes surprise and intrigue when talking about the time that already counts. In this matter, human beings are not even remotely among the organisms that live the longest. The oldest animal in the world reappeared in the ocean and one wonders how many more years this magnificent specimen of shark can live.
Far from habitat
The reunion with the oldest being still on the planet happened in the Caribbean. Specifically, near the coast of Belize. It is a specimen of the Greenland shark that is estimated to have been born in 1505. If the scientists’ approximation is correct, the animal would be 518 years old, as of today.
The explorer is more than half a millennium old. The researchers who found this shark again were temporarily tagging and capturing several tiger sharks. In the middle of the task, they found the surprising living being again.
The fascinating thing about all this is not only the fact of having found such an extraordinary animal. For the biologists involved, it was also unusual to see a cold-water species thousands of kilometers from its natural habitat.
Prehistoric
“Suddenly we saw a very slow and lazy creature under the surface of the water,” explained Devanshi Kasana. She is a biologist and doctoral candidate in the Predator Ecology and Conservation Laboratory at Florida International University. “It seemed like something from prehistory.”
In general, Greenland sharks are the longest-lived vertebrates. There are other specimens, in addition to the one mentioned, that have exceeded 400 years of age. This is according to a study conducted by Julius Nielsen, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen.
