Ocean quahog “Ming”. Photograph courtesy of Bangor University
A team of scientists from Bangor university announced that the world’s oldest known animal was an Icelandic clam known as “Ming”, but accidentally killed it whilst trying to verify its age.
Ming was a species of Icelandic clam known as an “ocean quahog” and was estimated to have been born in 1499, making it 507-years-old, with its name coming from the Chinese Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644) during which it was born.
It was taken from an Icelandic seabed in 2006, with researchers believing that it was just 405-years-old after counting the rings on the hinge of the clam – a difficult task after such a long period crowding them so closely together. The scientists opened the clam’s shell to check the age more carefully, killing the animal, and in the process finding that it was much older than they originally thought.
Whilst Ming may be the oldest living animal known, similar clams are caught by fisherman every year from Icelandic seabeds, with another older clam likely still alive, with the clam’s very slow metabolism the reason for its impressive longevity.
9 Comments
humans….. someday one of us clowns is gonna end mankind.. sad but true
That’s why aliens aren’t invading us, we will kill ourselves soon enough.
everybody makes mistakes everybody has those days
Who cares how old it is, what good does that data do anyone. Just a few lines in some shitty book.no one cares. leave things the fuck alone you retards.
We are turning the Ocean in to an acid bath anyway so a very great deal of life will be destroyed,will that stop us ? no of course it wont.
Good to see such vital work being undertaken by highly paid scientists.
The article pops up next photos of African migrants … probably hoping to make it to Bangor for a seafood supper?
Sometimes I want to cry and bang my head against the wall at the same time.
So if you’re a clam, you can live very long. Goes to prove racking up the years isn’t everything.
Maybe it wanted to get into a 500s+ only club and it didnt have any ID
I just want to know if they ate it, and how it tasted… no sense in letting it go to waste…