Scientists discover oldest living animal....and promptly kill it

[Morg]

LINK

Clam claims oldest animal record

* Ian Sample
*
o Ian Sample, science correspondent
o Guardian Unlimited
o Monday October 29 2007

A clam that lived on the seabed in the frigid waters off Iceland's north coast has been hailed as the longest-lived animal ever discovered.

The mollusc, which is thought to have lurked beneath the waves until at least the age of 405, would have been a juvenile when Galileo picked up his first telescope, Hamlet was first staged and the gunpowder plot failed to blow up King James I.

The Arctica islandica clam was plucked from 80m-deep water by researchers at Bangor University in Wales, who were dredging the north Iceland shelf for the creatures. By studying their shells, the scientists hope to learn how the marine environment has changed in recent centuries.

The clam was alive when it was brought to the surface, but at that point, the researchers had no idea how old it was. Only after cutting through the shell and counting annual growth rings under a microscope did they date the mollusc to between 405 to 410 years old.

"Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it," said Al Wanamaker, a postdoctoral scientist on the university's Arctica team. "For our work it's a bonus, but it wasn't good for this particular animal."

Marine biologists are unclear why the particular species of clam, Arctica islandica, is so long-lived. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the current claim for the oldest animal goes to another Arctica clam that lived for 220 years, though an unofficial record is held by yet another that lived to 374 years old.

Dr Wanamaker said he believed the clam had survived so long because fisheries and predators were so few in the region. In some parts, clam populations have been wiped out through overfishing, while marine predators, including cod, seals and wolf fish also take a hefty toll.

Chris Richardson, a member of the team, said further studies of the clams might shed light on ageing. "If, in Arctica islandica, evolution has created a model of successful resistance to the damage of ageing, it is possible that an investigation of the tissues of these real life Methuselahs might help us to understand the process of ageing," he said.

The clams are born as larvae which drift through the oceans until they settle on to the seabed and begin to grow shells. Unlike scallops, they cannot propel themselves, but burrow down into the sea bed where they filter and feed on a constant rain of nutrient-rich phytoplankton.

"It's a mind-boggling amount of time to be sat there doing that," said Dr Wanamaker.

The project was part of a broader EU programme called Millennium, which seeks to understand changes in climate over the past 1000 years. The researchers can interpret how the ocean conditions varied by looking for changes in shell growth, which are affected by seawater temperature, salinity and availability of food.

The research team believe they may have older clams in their collection that have yet to be dissected.

"It's quite possible others are out there in the water that are 600 years old," said Dr Wanamaker.

 

[The Lizard]

 

[Spider-Kid]

Uuuuuhhhhh....

 

[Carcharodon]

405 years old...****.

 

[sinewave]

mmmm, 405 year old clam. fry it up!

 

[knowsbleed]

It deserved to die...damn greedy for life clam

 

[The Evolutionist]

Why not just keep it around until it dies naturally?

 

[bullets]

because that would make too much sense

 

[Leto Atrides]

1. It's an otherwise normal clam, who cares if you kill it? It's not like it was a dog or a horse that they killed before its time, or some rare species. It's just an exceedingly old normal clam.
2. They dredged it up, it wouldn't have lived much longer anyway.
3. They had to kill it to get any real information out of it.

 

[bullets]

well we dont know how long it could have potentially lived for.

 

[Alex The Great]

LINK

I CARUMBA!!!!!! well......at least they put the clam out of his miser

 

[hammy]

Best thread title, ever.

 

[Captain_BluTac]

god those scientists must of been dumb if its that old its gonna be pretty big and why kill a abnormally large clam

 

[Alex The Great]

haha yup. best thread title ever. maybe the scientists were worried that the clam was gonna unleash 400 years of azz kickin lol

 

[Captain_BluTac]

in its 400 years it had learnt the darkest of arts

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

3. They had to kill it to get any real information out of it.

So they were like C.I.A. guys and the clam was like a terrorist.
The clam was jealous of our freedoms!

 

[Dew k. Mosi]

it was 405 years old, but what the hell kind of life did it live? 405 years of boredom. Sitting around, eating, pooping... hmm, if it had access to a computer, it would have been my life.

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

Dew poo
great image

 

[knowsbleed]

better image than "pre-food".

blech.

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

hahaha

I disagree.
I don't want to put a face to the act.

 

[knowsbleed]

poofaces can be so similar to O-faces that its not even funny.

take a pic of one of your partners next time during both acts...you'll be amazed...and disgusted at the same time. How often do you get to experience that?

 

[terry78]

^And sometimes they're one and the same.

Wait.

 

[Dew k. Mosi]

better image than "pre-food".

blech.

pre-food? wazzat mean?

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

He got mixed up.
Earlier I was saying that talking about food all day is gross 'cause you're talking about "Pre-Poo".

 

[knowsbleed]

haha...