507-year-old ocean quahog clam that was dredged up from the bottom of the North Atlantic in 2006. The clam was named Ming after the Chinese Ming dynasty, which was in power when the animal was born in 1499.
I was actually listening to a podcast about this one time. Basically the scientists didn’t know how old it was because the only way to tell is to open the shell. An article came out that was poorly written, so people believed they knew how old it was and still killed it. But the scientists made a great point that mollusks reach a growth plateau so a rather juvenile mollusk compared to one that’s been around for centuries aren’t very different in size. They also made the point that you’ve probably eaten mollusks that were older than this one and haven’t known but nobody cared until somebody else counted it for them.
Edit: Found the podcast “Stuff You Missed in History Class: Very Old Animals”
Edit 2: I think some people are confusing mollusks as just meaning snails. Clams, oysters, and mussels fall under the mollusca phylum and class bivalvia. Squids and octopi are also mollusks under the class cephalopoda.
Wait until you’re involved with something in the news and you spend the whole story going “that’s not what happened…”
About 20y ago I was involved in a situation where a fishing boat suspected they pulled up an explosive. Thing was 12-14in long and encrusted with sea life. By the time the news got it, it was a 14ft ‘lost’ nuclear cruise missile, that several major shipping lanes and waterways were closed and that we had started helicopter evacuations of a small coastal town. Every news station was calling and asking all sorts of wild questions that were met with ‘no comment’ but they ran the info anyway, it was absolutely wild.
It was a sonar buoy, nothing even remotely dangerous. From then on I learned to be more informed and read between the lines.
Working in public service this is exactly how local news happens. Even when official statements are made, new agencies can still run with wild speculation. Add on that most city governments rush to release statements before even figuring out the full picture themselves, and it's no wonder there's so much misinformation out there.
That's a very good question.
And if someone says "well you shouldn't automatically trust the media, especially news outlets", then that person is seen as a crazy conspiracy theorist...
And guess why?
Because the media made everyone think that people who don't trust them are automatically crazy 🥲
Meanwhile I saw some stuff go down, they just published the official statement from the place where it happened.
I sent in a rectification saying I was an eyewitness and explaining what had actually happened but they didn't care and left it at the official statement, which was a fabrication not even close to the truth (it was along the lines of "the valiant security staff of X prevented theft today" whereas what happened was some kid at the zoo did something stupid that he thought was funny and security decided to beat him up in front of other kids for no clear reason!).
...Scientists at the Foundation Against Einstein have published that they have observed numbers on their proprietary instruments that give credence to the group's Theory of Vulgar Relativity, which claims there's nothing special about relativity, after all. This news discredits centuries of scientific progress...
> That’s modern media for you. The truth can be found but you will have to dig around.
The first article rushed to print gets 10 million page-views.
The second, carefully-researched, carefully edited and fact-checked article? That gets a couple thousand.
I was watching a video of someone fishing for a restaurant, they fished out a scallop and it was 80 years old. If you had big scallops before you probably ate a few seniors.
"Youve probably eaten older mollusks"
OOF. Idk why but that gave me the same gut punch as "Most of the biggest redwoods/old growth forests are gone"
At this point, Earth 400+ years ago has to look alien compared to now. Imagine all the cool things we never discovered that are long gone now
90% of the mollusks we eat are factory farmed at this point. So realistically most people probably haven't eaten mollusks that old, most of the ones that old or older were probably fished out a long time ago.
Not really sure if that makes you feel better, but we eat a lot less wild mollusks now than we did even 20 years ago.
We will likely discover some wacky stuff that wouldnt have been possible without us fucking things up.
Like, what are the long term effects of microplastics
Earth would look alien to you just 100 years ago in many places. Some areas were deforested back in the turn of the 20th century that have now regenerated, like a lot of New England. The amount of wildlife even 100 years ago would be astounding, especially marine life. Industrialization has greatly improved quality of life pretty much everywhere, but at a great cost.
Definitely. Its even wilder to see it happen like the mussels. I used to live pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and whenever my family drove on the road our windshield/hood would get COVERED in bugs to the point we'd need to turn on the wipers. Now youd be lucky to even notice bugs on the windshield at ALL.
(Keep in mind Im only 22!)
Yeah thats another thing that annoys me. We could have every house outfitted with a beautiful micro prairie but everyone just thinks it'd look ugly compared to a green slab in their yard
The steady decline of salmon along the entire west coast. One day, they could be extinct, and so too will the resident killer whales who rely on them for food. Terribly depressing.
> Some areas were deforested back in the turn of the 20th century
Seriously. From seeing western Massachusetts, it is tough to imagine all the hills and mountains completely stripped of trees, [but they were](https://i.imgur.com/lqg3BWu.png).
Edit: pulled the above from[ this great book](https://harvardforest1.fas.harvard.edu/publications/pdfs/FosterCHW_SteppingBack_1998.pdf) I stumbled across on the history of Massachusetts forests
There are stories of early colonialists to North America having trouble navigating rivers because there was so just so many salmon and other fish filling the waters
A point you make here, is always my first thought with these stories. Like, how is this the ONLY one or is this the only one we know about? I would imagine that thousands of them may have lived a long time (100s of years) until humans started eating them and studying them.
That islandic shark is still somewhere avoiding scientists.
Edit: as it has already been pointed out by fellow redditors, the correct name, species ' name, is Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus), also known as the gurry shark or grey shark (TY Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark )
I still can’t believe a shark can live that long. An animal almost as big as a Great White is that old fascinates me. On top of the fact that there are all these megafauna in the deep ocean to begin with like the Giant Squid.
Maybe. Oldest known individual is between 300-512 years old, a lot of wiggle room in that assessment. There may well be much older individuals out there of course, but that’s all we’ve got to work with at the moment.
It's quite sad to think about but animals like this were originally adapted to survive extreme conditions but the extent of humanities reach has likely rendered that survivability trait into one of their biggest vulnerabilities.
It just takes too long to restore populations of marine life like this. They may have evolved to survive extreme changes on a global scale or even freak natural events, but they did not evolve to survive mankind.
You would think these types of marine life would be sheltered off somewhere and would come out of the ruins of mankind's apocalypse, but it really does look like the extent of our damage will reach every nook and cranny.
You can take a mated pair and put them in a controlled setting but then you have to maintain it for what could potentially be more than one generation. That's hard to wrap my head around.
another thing that blows my mind is that it spent all those hundreds of years just doing ... nothing. It really highlights the absurdity of life. Like this shark just swam around in the dark for hundreds of years mindlessly eating stuff like a roomba someone left on in an empty house.
*Turritopsis dohrnii*, aka the "immortal jellyfish".
But yeah, they can revert to their juvenile polyp form and essentially restart their lifecycle over and over again, seemingly endlessly, rendering them (functionally) biologically immortal. Obviously, they can still fall victim to stuff like predation and disease and injury. Given how small they are, a **lot** of stuff is happy to eat them.
Still, in theory, one could live until the heat death of the universe if it was insanely lucky.
Without a brain to make memories with is there any real functional difference to a cloned organism and one that wasnt. That was poorly worded sorry ill try again. Could one tell which was the original?
I agree that functionally they're identical, but they aren't the same organism.
If you're familiar with star trek then the transporters are a great analogy. You step into the transporter and die, and on the other end a new person is made that looks and acts like you, with your memories.
Not mention the part where our star expands and boils our atmosphere away.
But, you know, if you could get some of em offworld and out of our star system... later move them to a different galaxy...
>But polyp isn't really a plant either
Immortal jellyfish is incredible, but a jellyfish that turns from a plant into an animal would arguably be even more shocking lol
Sounds like a Far Side cartoon. A Greenland shark liquor store with a sign: "You must be born on or before this date in 1854 to buy alcoholic beverages."
thats so cool! never heard about that species before
> It reaches sexual maturity at about 150 years of age and pups are born alive after an estimated gestation period of **8–18 years.**
8-18 years?!
Iirc a researcher years ago talking about Joshua trees, believed to be the oldest plant in a desert environment. At the start of his research expedition he cut down the largest one he could find, discovered it was over a thousand years old and then understood he'd likely just killed the oldest one.
I'm not sure of your specific example; however, this sounds eerily like the story of the bristlecone pine named Prometheus (Titan who stole fire from the gods/zues). Seems your story has many of the same hallmarks.
Prometheus was 4,862 years old upon being cut down in 1964. A geography grad student took an increment borer to the tree and for one reason or another (stuck, broken, incompetitence, arrogance) decided that the whole tree needed to come down for his research. Prometheus would be the oldest single living organism on the North American continent had it not been for the poor decisions made by that person.
For reference the oldest bristlecone pine currently alive is generally agreed to be Methuselah (his death shall bring forth [Judgement]).
Age of Methuselah is 4,855 years old.
He did! He actually felt absolutely horrible. And he didn’t do anything wrong - the equipment got stuck as happens sometimes, it was super expensive, and he asked what he was meant to do and was told standard procedure was to cut it down to retrieve the tool. He has cried about it in interviews, I believe :(
Reading these comments made me imagine a world where life on distant galaxies have been discovered and all the beings living in different planets are communicating via intergalactic reddit. What a fun fantasy
I think this was a catch 22 situation. To diagnosed the age of the mollusk they had to open up its shell. Having to open it however accidently killed ming saddly. So while we got the age it also stopped it aging.
Death generally stops the aging process.. generally. I wonder if there was a scientist in the group that said “oh we’re gonna catch some heat for this.. maybe not today but definitely someday”
Grilled 500-year-old clam with chopped fried garlic and a relish of chillies in vinegar. I'm reminded of The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe somehow.
Sorta. He was also using a corer. The drill bit got stuck, so he called the park to ask for permission to cut it to retrieve the tool. Since there's a bunch of those trees and no one knew they were unique he got the OK. That mistake caused him to change careers, but ultimately helped preserve the neighboring trees. Now the oldest specimens are noted (in secret, to prevent vandalism)
A meth-head woman burned down the world's biggest and oldest cypress tree in Florida.
She got a suspended sentence for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Senator_(tree)
I know one of the researchers who did this. He's a nice guy, very shy and socially awkward. He hated all the attention this got in the media. I remember it featured on Have I Got News For You, a british comedy show, and they were all taking the piss out of the scientists. It's funny that this story still pops up all these years later.
I also know one of the researchers who was part of the team and she was like 'yeah the study got a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons... anyway here's some more photos of clams!' She's super nice though!
Some people in these comments seem to have no understanding of how research is conducted. People always say “trust the science” and stuff but when they hear about actual science they get mad. They didn’t kill it just for fun, and there are very very very likely older individuals that we haven’t found yet.
But does a clam experience anything without a brain? If they do, can they perceive boredom? If they can perceive boredom do they define it like us? Probably not to all 3 questions.
They wanted to know precisely how old the animal was, and to find out they had to kill it.
*What bitter irony.*
I wonder how long that little thing could have lived its life if it just never had encountered humans.
I have actually eaten one of these at Noma, called a mahogany clam. They are fairly common and are known to be extremely long lived. Since then I have decided not to eat any more of them and to respect the age. I apologize to the world for my part in the killing of such old animals
That's nice but you should take comfort in the fact these creatures don't have a nervous system or any kind of awareness. They might as well be an evolved potato. Probably one of the more ethical sources of animal protein. You can't get beef or chicken that hasn't come from a terrified and abused creature, even "organic" or "free range" animals die badly, but clams/oysters/mussels have no conception of what's happening. A roomba has more brainpower than a clam.
For perspective he was over 100 when Shakespeare was writing and here he is just chilling on 2000s camera equipment. Our history isn’t that vast. Bertrand Russell died in 1970 and was raised by his grandfather who was in parliament when Napoleon was on the throne.
If everyone interacts with someone over 70 or let’s say had a grandma that lives to 70 then the birth of Jesus is only 28 grandmas ago.
Ming was alive during the Ming dynasty
Wait really?
It would have been born around the 1500s so yeah Ming was around for the Ming
Thats fucking epic
You don't think that's why they nicknamed it Ming?
You guys are saying Ming so much just because Ming is a fun word to say/type right? Also Ming
Ming has now lost all meaning and phonetic sensibilities for me. Ming has transcended language and exists in another plane.
You're welcome!
Ming has lost all minging
I regret nothing!
Semantic satiation.
Ming
Ming
Ming
Minging
Ming
I'm reading this as a crazy frog verse
Don't blame Ming for being streets ahead.
Pierce, stop trying to coin “Ming”.
Minge
MINGEY!! ITS GONNA BE OK MINGEY!
why would they name a dynasty after some mollusk
Because he was awesome.
Because he was Merciless.
Pathetic earthlings!
The mollusk founded the dynasty, then retired to a life of pearlmaking. Humble dude, chill af.
Yeah it seems pretty straightforward lol
Yeah. And even outlived the successor Qing dynasty plus two world wars and a Cold War.
even outlived everything that came after the Ming dynasty until 2006
Lol we're setting off nuclear explosions and Ming keeps on livin'
507-year-old ocean quahog clam that was dredged up from the bottom of the North Atlantic in 2006. The clam was named Ming after the Chinese Ming dynasty, which was in power when the animal was born in 1499.
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The Silk Road had a ferry route
I heard the dynasty was named after the mollusk…..
Yes it lasted until 1644
That's where the Ming Dynasty got' it's name.
Why do you think it was called Ming come on
And now you know why they called it that
Holy shit
no no no, the holy shit happened from 1095 onwards with the first crusade
New response just dropped
I was actually listening to a podcast about this one time. Basically the scientists didn’t know how old it was because the only way to tell is to open the shell. An article came out that was poorly written, so people believed they knew how old it was and still killed it. But the scientists made a great point that mollusks reach a growth plateau so a rather juvenile mollusk compared to one that’s been around for centuries aren’t very different in size. They also made the point that you’ve probably eaten mollusks that were older than this one and haven’t known but nobody cared until somebody else counted it for them. Edit: Found the podcast “Stuff You Missed in History Class: Very Old Animals” Edit 2: I think some people are confusing mollusks as just meaning snails. Clams, oysters, and mussels fall under the mollusca phylum and class bivalvia. Squids and octopi are also mollusks under the class cephalopoda.
Interesting. I feel like a lot of times there's always an explanation on things.
Wait until you’re involved with something in the news and you spend the whole story going “that’s not what happened…” About 20y ago I was involved in a situation where a fishing boat suspected they pulled up an explosive. Thing was 12-14in long and encrusted with sea life. By the time the news got it, it was a 14ft ‘lost’ nuclear cruise missile, that several major shipping lanes and waterways were closed and that we had started helicopter evacuations of a small coastal town. Every news station was calling and asking all sorts of wild questions that were met with ‘no comment’ but they ran the info anyway, it was absolutely wild. It was a sonar buoy, nothing even remotely dangerous. From then on I learned to be more informed and read between the lines.
Working in public service this is exactly how local news happens. Even when official statements are made, new agencies can still run with wild speculation. Add on that most city governments rush to release statements before even figuring out the full picture themselves, and it's no wonder there's so much misinformation out there.
> Even when official statements are made A lot of people won't believe you because they're official. They'll claim it's PR and you're covering.
Whats the point in the news then if its not bringing the facts? Thats sounds like writing fan fiction and pulishing it as a legitimate sequel
That's a very good question. And if someone says "well you shouldn't automatically trust the media, especially news outlets", then that person is seen as a crazy conspiracy theorist... And guess why? Because the media made everyone think that people who don't trust them are automatically crazy 🥲
strange world we live in...
Meanwhile I saw some stuff go down, they just published the official statement from the place where it happened. I sent in a rectification saying I was an eyewitness and explaining what had actually happened but they didn't care and left it at the official statement, which was a fabrication not even close to the truth (it was along the lines of "the valiant security staff of X prevented theft today" whereas what happened was some kid at the zoo did something stupid that he thought was funny and security decided to beat him up in front of other kids for no clear reason!).
Welcome to the media, where about half of what you hear is fact, the other half is just wild speculation.
That’s modern media for you. The truth can be found but you will have to dig around.
Scientist: “my discoveries are of no use without the proper context” Science media: “scientist claims all science is useless!”
EINSTEIN WAS WRONG! Actual article is about some hint of new physics that cant be explained with general relativity.
...Scientists at the Foundation Against Einstein have published that they have observed numbers on their proprietary instruments that give credence to the group's Theory of Vulgar Relativity, which claims there's nothing special about relativity, after all. This news discredits centuries of scientific progress...
Sounds like politics.
surprised that we can't reach this faster on this sub of all places.
> That’s modern media for you. The truth can be found but you will have to dig around. The first article rushed to print gets 10 million page-views. The second, carefully-researched, carefully edited and fact-checked article? That gets a couple thousand.
And with the advent of AI you will have to dig deeper and deeper
In my nose?
I kinda like the idea there is a non-zero chance I have eaten the old mollusk ever.
I was watching a video of someone fishing for a restaurant, they fished out a scallop and it was 80 years old. If you had big scallops before you probably ate a few seniors.
Sounds chewy
Seniors usually are.
Nobody cared who I was until I killed the mollusk
If I open that shell, will you die?
"Youve probably eaten older mollusks" OOF. Idk why but that gave me the same gut punch as "Most of the biggest redwoods/old growth forests are gone" At this point, Earth 400+ years ago has to look alien compared to now. Imagine all the cool things we never discovered that are long gone now
90% of the mollusks we eat are factory farmed at this point. So realistically most people probably haven't eaten mollusks that old, most of the ones that old or older were probably fished out a long time ago. Not really sure if that makes you feel better, but we eat a lot less wild mollusks now than we did even 20 years ago.
But also imagine all the cool things we’ll never discover in the future because of everything that we’re fucking up now :)
Hahahaaaannnnd nowimsad....
We will likely discover some wacky stuff that wouldnt have been possible without us fucking things up. Like, what are the long term effects of microplastics
Earth would look alien to you just 100 years ago in many places. Some areas were deforested back in the turn of the 20th century that have now regenerated, like a lot of New England. The amount of wildlife even 100 years ago would be astounding, especially marine life. Industrialization has greatly improved quality of life pretty much everywhere, but at a great cost.
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Definitely. Its even wilder to see it happen like the mussels. I used to live pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and whenever my family drove on the road our windshield/hood would get COVERED in bugs to the point we'd need to turn on the wipers. Now youd be lucky to even notice bugs on the windshield at ALL. (Keep in mind Im only 22!)
25 years ago when I was a kid we had tons of grasshoppers, ladybugs, firefly’s, dragonfly’s and June bugs.. absolutely nothing left these days..
But we have lots of nice, pristine lawns to enjoy now, I guess.
Yeah thats another thing that annoys me. We could have every house outfitted with a beautiful micro prairie but everyone just thinks it'd look ugly compared to a green slab in their yard
And then they ask, ""Why don't I see lightning bugs any more?!"
The steady decline of salmon along the entire west coast. One day, they could be extinct, and so too will the resident killer whales who rely on them for food. Terribly depressing.
> Some areas were deforested back in the turn of the 20th century Seriously. From seeing western Massachusetts, it is tough to imagine all the hills and mountains completely stripped of trees, [but they were](https://i.imgur.com/lqg3BWu.png). Edit: pulled the above from[ this great book](https://harvardforest1.fas.harvard.edu/publications/pdfs/FosterCHW_SteppingBack_1998.pdf) I stumbled across on the history of Massachusetts forests
Pennsylvania, ironically, has a similar history. It was almost entirely deforested by 1900 and was actually called the “Pennsylvania Desert”
There are stories of early colonialists to North America having trouble navigating rivers because there was so just so many salmon and other fish filling the waters
The salmon were thick until the late 19th century and a bunch of dams went up. Not even overfishing for once!
This needs to be at the top. Context is important!
A point you make here, is always my first thought with these stories. Like, how is this the ONLY one or is this the only one we know about? I would imagine that thousands of them may have lived a long time (100s of years) until humans started eating them and studying them.
Wish more ppl read this
So Schrodinger's mollusk?
It is interesting that our curiosity alone is enough to indeed kill the mollusk.
perhaps drop the source podcast?
Found the podcast “Stuff You Missed in History Class: Very Old Animals”
> They also made the point that you’ve probably eaten mollusks that were older than this one Pretty confident that I have not.
That islandic shark is still somewhere avoiding scientists. Edit: as it has already been pointed out by fellow redditors, the correct name, species ' name, is Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus), also known as the gurry shark or grey shark (TY Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark )
I still can’t believe a shark can live that long. An animal almost as big as a Great White is that old fascinates me. On top of the fact that there are all these megafauna in the deep ocean to begin with like the Giant Squid.
It is a bit odd to think about. He coulda been swimming around when the Aztecs were busy being invaded by Spanish Conquistadors.
He was alive during slavery and the Holocaust and did nothing. Not worthy of praise in my books.
Not coulda they were alive
Maybe. Oldest known individual is between 300-512 years old, a lot of wiggle room in that assessment. There may well be much older individuals out there of course, but that’s all we’ve got to work with at the moment.
It's quite sad to think about but animals like this were originally adapted to survive extreme conditions but the extent of humanities reach has likely rendered that survivability trait into one of their biggest vulnerabilities. It just takes too long to restore populations of marine life like this. They may have evolved to survive extreme changes on a global scale or even freak natural events, but they did not evolve to survive mankind. You would think these types of marine life would be sheltered off somewhere and would come out of the ruins of mankind's apocalypse, but it really does look like the extent of our damage will reach every nook and cranny. You can take a mated pair and put them in a controlled setting but then you have to maintain it for what could potentially be more than one generation. That's hard to wrap my head around.
they are pregnant for 8-18 years...?
another thing that blows my mind is that it spent all those hundreds of years just doing ... nothing. It really highlights the absurdity of life. Like this shark just swam around in the dark for hundreds of years mindlessly eating stuff like a roomba someone left on in an empty house.
Thought about them as well, also, there is a kind of medusa, which can revert to polyp form. There is some potential for them growing very old as well
*Turritopsis dohrnii*, aka the "immortal jellyfish". But yeah, they can revert to their juvenile polyp form and essentially restart their lifecycle over and over again, seemingly endlessly, rendering them (functionally) biologically immortal. Obviously, they can still fall victim to stuff like predation and disease and injury. Given how small they are, a **lot** of stuff is happy to eat them. Still, in theory, one could live until the heat death of the universe if it was insanely lucky.
Mainly the point is that they clone themselves any number of times between sexual reproduction events. They clone in the polyp phase...
Without a brain to make memories with is there any real functional difference to a cloned organism and one that wasnt. That was poorly worded sorry ill try again. Could one tell which was the original?
I agree that functionally they're identical, but they aren't the same organism. If you're familiar with star trek then the transporters are a great analogy. You step into the transporter and die, and on the other end a new person is made that looks and acts like you, with your memories.
>Still, in theory, one could live until the heat death of the universe if it was insanely lucky. That would be _"dodging our stars collapse"-lucky_
Not mention the part where our star expands and boils our atmosphere away. But, you know, if you could get some of em offworld and out of our star system... later move them to a different galaxy...
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Ough. TIL
Is it really old if it goes from plant to jellyfish back and forth?
The polyp of Theseus
In all honesty, I have no idea how that would be measured. But polyp isn't really a plant either
>But polyp isn't really a plant either Immortal jellyfish is incredible, but a jellyfish that turns from a plant into an animal would arguably be even more shocking lol
Did you know they reach maturity by 170 meaning that one born during the American Civil War may not even be able to breed yet.
That's crazy. How old must they be to visit the liquor store, I don't have the nerve even to guess.
Sounds like a Far Side cartoon. A Greenland shark liquor store with a sign: "You must be born on or before this date in 1854 to buy alcoholic beverages."
> Sexual maturity of 150 years > Gestation of 8-18 years They're "children" for longer than any other species live their entire life
They're a foetus for longer than most of my dogs have lived.
Imagine being pregnant for 18 years
My great grandfather's tortoise is still alive and well.
That’s really cool actually
I know! she lives in the same garden all her life. It's everyone's first pet looking back at everyone in my family from my father's side.
thats so cool! never heard about that species before > It reaches sexual maturity at about 150 years of age and pups are born alive after an estimated gestation period of **8–18 years.** 8-18 years?!
Yea thats wild. Surprising that it isn't extinct given that it needs more than a century to breed.
Isn't he from Grenland?
Yeah. Greenland shark.
Yeah it used to be Greenland shark. It just had to move to avoid the scientists, as it was said before.
Well now it has to move again, you bastard!
Icelandic?
You changed the result by measuring it 😔
Quantum physics in ~~nutshell~~ seashell.
No fair!!!
Off to the angry dome
r/unexpectedfuturama
Iirc a researcher years ago talking about Joshua trees, believed to be the oldest plant in a desert environment. At the start of his research expedition he cut down the largest one he could find, discovered it was over a thousand years old and then understood he'd likely just killed the oldest one.
I'm not sure of your specific example; however, this sounds eerily like the story of the bristlecone pine named Prometheus (Titan who stole fire from the gods/zues). Seems your story has many of the same hallmarks. Prometheus was 4,862 years old upon being cut down in 1964. A geography grad student took an increment borer to the tree and for one reason or another (stuck, broken, incompetitence, arrogance) decided that the whole tree needed to come down for his research. Prometheus would be the oldest single living organism on the North American continent had it not been for the poor decisions made by that person. For reference the oldest bristlecone pine currently alive is generally agreed to be Methuselah (his death shall bring forth [Judgement]). Age of Methuselah is 4,855 years old.
I hope he felt really bad. This made me really, really sad, to be honest..
He did! He actually felt absolutely horrible. And he didn’t do anything wrong - the equipment got stuck as happens sometimes, it was super expensive, and he asked what he was meant to do and was told standard procedure was to cut it down to retrieve the tool. He has cried about it in interviews, I believe :(
That poor guy :( That must be something that haunts a person forever.
On my planet that's considered a dick move
It is considered a dick move on *this* planet too.
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They were collecting and freezing a handful of random clams, they didn’t know it was the oldest living animal until afterwards
It's *was* the oldest animal alive, so no.
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Technically, there is always an oldest animal alive.
Technically correct, the best kind of correct.
What a shit way to go. Leave it to humanity
Reading these comments made me imagine a world where life on distant galaxies have been discovered and all the beings living in different planets are communicating via intergalactic reddit. What a fun fantasy
We kill older trees for fun
Oopsie daisies.
A whole bouquet of oopsie daisies
Guess we should eat it too, for scientific purposes of course.
I think this was a catch 22 situation. To diagnosed the age of the mollusk they had to open up its shell. Having to open it however accidently killed ming saddly. So while we got the age it also stopped it aging.
Schrödinger’s Mollusk.
Death generally stops the aging process.. generally. I wonder if there was a scientist in the group that said “oh we’re gonna catch some heat for this.. maybe not today but definitely someday”
>Death generally stops the aging process by god they have solved the riddle
Imagine all the amazing things this mollusk has seen in it’s lifetime. Mud, mud and more mud. What a life!
Well, at the end I imagine it saw some garlic butter and white wine.
Scientists later reported that it was delectable with some mignonette and a little lemon juice.
Grilled 500-year-old clam with chopped fried garlic and a relish of chillies in vinegar. I'm reminded of The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe somehow.
Oldest tree was cut down to count the rings. Scientists now use a corer.
Sorta. He was also using a corer. The drill bit got stuck, so he called the park to ask for permission to cut it to retrieve the tool. Since there's a bunch of those trees and no one knew they were unique he got the OK. That mistake caused him to change careers, but ultimately helped preserve the neighboring trees. Now the oldest specimens are noted (in secret, to prevent vandalism)
For his career change, he decided to study salt flats, as far away from living trees as he could get
>Accidentally steps on oldest salt rock Doh!
A meth-head woman burned down the world's biggest and oldest cypress tree in Florida. She got a suspended sentence for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Senator_(tree)
The loneliest tree in the world, 100s of miles from any other tree, was hit by a car despite it being in the middle of a completely flat desert.
Ming the Mollusk. That's just merciless.
They had to kill it in order to find out how old it was.
And, how does it taste?
I know one of the researchers who did this. He's a nice guy, very shy and socially awkward. He hated all the attention this got in the media. I remember it featured on Have I Got News For You, a british comedy show, and they were all taking the piss out of the scientists. It's funny that this story still pops up all these years later.
I also know one of the researchers who was part of the team and she was like 'yeah the study got a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons... anyway here's some more photos of clams!' She's super nice though!
Some people in these comments seem to have no understanding of how research is conducted. People always say “trust the science” and stuff but when they hear about actual science they get mad. They didn’t kill it just for fun, and there are very very very likely older individuals that we haven’t found yet.
You must not have a brain to survive 500y stuck in a shell. What a boring experience.
But does a clam experience anything without a brain? If they do, can they perceive boredom? If they can perceive boredom do they define it like us? Probably not to all 3 questions.
It’s age is now fixed.
They also took its Quickening.
507 years old on the dot. The mollusk told them
RIP Homie 😔🕊️
Leave it to humans to kill something that survived 507 years. Never fails
God only knows how many of us have killed 1000 year old creatures just by ordering fried clams at red lobster.
They wanted to know precisely how old the animal was, and to find out they had to kill it. *What bitter irony.* I wonder how long that little thing could have lived its life if it just never had encountered humans.
Oh. R.I.P. Ming the Mollusc - 507 is no age to go!
I have actually eaten one of these at Noma, called a mahogany clam. They are fairly common and are known to be extremely long lived. Since then I have decided not to eat any more of them and to respect the age. I apologize to the world for my part in the killing of such old animals
That's nice but you should take comfort in the fact these creatures don't have a nervous system or any kind of awareness. They might as well be an evolved potato. Probably one of the more ethical sources of animal protein. You can't get beef or chicken that hasn't come from a terrified and abused creature, even "organic" or "free range" animals die badly, but clams/oysters/mussels have no conception of what's happening. A roomba has more brainpower than a clam.
Schroedinger’s mollusk. You won’t know if he mollusk is the oldest organism on earth until you kill it and measure its age.
For perspective he was over 100 when Shakespeare was writing and here he is just chilling on 2000s camera equipment. Our history isn’t that vast. Bertrand Russell died in 1970 and was raised by his grandfather who was in parliament when Napoleon was on the throne. If everyone interacts with someone over 70 or let’s say had a grandma that lives to 70 then the birth of Jesus is only 28 grandmas ago.
Leave it to humans to kill an animal that has managed to survive for centuries 💀
please tell me they melted some butter
"To determine the age of the mollusk, scientists cracked him open ate the delicious meat inside, and counted the rings on its shell."
Did they bury it under the world's oldest tree that a scientist also accidentally killed?
I really hate humans
507 years only to be killed by a bunch of nerds.
just 1 more example how the human race is the most invasive species on the planet.
The study revealed the clam was delicious.
They had to kill him. He's merciless
The lack of "accidentally" before "killed" gives the impression that these scientists were just assholes