Thanks nickcarraway. It's been said that sharks live a really long while, and I'm not sure they even have kidneys.
Posted on 12/13/2017 10:56:09 AM PST by nickcarraway
A SHARK believed to be the oldest living vertebrate has been discovered in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Danish scientists found the ancient creature — which is believed to be 512 years old and is 18ft long.
The shark is the world's oldest vertebrate – an animal with a backbone – and may have been born in 1505, when King Henry VIII was just 14 years old.
According to the journal Science, Greenland sharks grow at just one cm a year.
So when they discovered a female shark measuring a whopping 18 feet, they knew this creature had to be incredibly old.
Scientists used radiocarbon dating to analyse the eye lens of 28 different Greenland sharks.
The oldest shark found came out as 392 years old.
As radiocarbon dating has a 95% certainty, the shark's true age could be between 272 and 512 years.
If this is true, the shark will have lived through Galileo's discovery that the Earth orbits the Sun, and the founding of the United States.
Incredibly, Greenland sharks don't reach sexual maturity until the age of 156, but it can happen as young as 134 according to findings.
Their flesh is considered a delicacy in Iceland, but is also toxic, containing a chemical that when eaten gives a sensation similar to extreme drunkenness.
You might be thinking of Surstromming, the Swedish delicacy. It is basically canned rotted herring. I smelled it once briefly and had to leave the room. It smells worse than dead bodies.
Yeah, well 156 is the new 134.
Well, a drunken person is said to be intoxicated....
Amazing, though, that a living creature as it ages would produce an intoxicating product that humans relish.
A living wine cellar, who’d a thunk it?
The rise and fall of tides isn’t due to the rotation of the earth (and the gravitational pull of the moon and sun)?
Democrat icon member of Congress?
When he was born, Christopher Columbus was still alive. He might have seen Juan Ponce de León, Jacques Cartier and Henry Hudson sail past.
I had it several times, I know once is enough, while I was in Iceland. The only reason to try the 'Rotten Shark' is to get a drink of 'Black Death' to wash it down.
....or have tasted of a mutinous sailor made to
walk the plank.
Thanks nickcarraway. It's been said that sharks live a really long while, and I'm not sure they even have kidneys.
Auckland
A turtle which explorer Captain Cook gave to the King of Tonga in 1777 died yesterday. It was nearly 200 years old.
The animal, called Tu’imalila, died at the royal palace ground in the Tongan capital of Nuku, Alofa.
The people of Tonga regarded the animal as a chief, and special keepers were appointed to look after it. It was blinded in a bush fire a few years ago.
Tonga radio said Tu’imalila’s carcass would be sent to the Auckland Museum in New Zealand.
-Reuters, 1966
[from “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” By Phillip K. Dick]
The long period of immaturity suggests that in spite of humans’ opinions about other animals brains, north Atlantic sharks spend of lot of time learning before sexual maturity.
The parallel is the greater degree of enforced delay of “virtual” sexual maturity human societies have placed on “young adults”, over time, as “more advanced” learning seemed necessary for the more complex human societies.
Science is discovering numerous animal species have been doing the same thing, naturally, and not just “virtually” but actually, and due to various changing conditions, in their own case. The successive generation(s) have delayed sexual maturity, had fewer offspring but had more successful offspring by apparently learning how to cope better with changes the species encountered. They get a longer period of learning before reproduction and seem to have better survival strategies when they do start reproduction.
I am not sure what THAT says in the case of the north Atlantic sharks, other than the later sexual maturity does suggest “more learning” time was naturally deemed important. How that is triggered, versus how humans have intentionally triggered it is something I do not have an answer for.
Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish scientist living about a century before Galileo, had already come up with the unorthodox idea that the Sun was at the center of the solar system. Galileo knew about and had accepted Copernicus's heliocentric (Sun-centered) theory.
It was Galileo's observations of Venus that proved the theory. Using his telescope, Galileo found that Venus went through phases, just like our Moon. But, the nature of these phases could only be explained by Venus going around the Sun, not the Earth. Galileo concluded that Venus must travel around the Sun, passing at times behind and beyond it, rather than revolving directly around the Earth.
Galileo's observations of the phases of Venus virtually proved that the Earth was not the center of the universe. It was this assertion which most angered the Church leaders of the time. [solar-center.stanford.edu]
Of course none of that was possible until Isaac Newton invented gravity.
Wow, while what you wtote sounds well thought out it’s a load of...... The sharks do not delay mating, nothing you said has any substance.
If you believe evolution it violates everything you wrote.
“Wow, while what you wtote sounds well thought out it’s a load of...... The sharks do not delay mating, nothing you said has any substance.”
So the article was lying: “Incredibly, Greenland sharks don’t reach sexual maturity until the age of 156, but it can happen as young as 134 according to findings.” As I said, they have an extended period of immaturity, sexual immaturity. Sand Sharks are sexually mature at 16-29 yrs, great whites at 26-33, and blue sharks at 5-6.
And I’m sorry to burst your scientific fantasy, but any animal or generations of animals which through observation & experience learn to change behavior is not the same thing as where evolution posits genetic changes and/or alteration of the physical makeup and physiology of a species. Two different things. The former may over a terribly long period of time be part of the latter, for the evolution theorists, but in much shorter periods of time the former changes are not dependent on the latter.
Animal’s can’t change their code by thinking....thats where you run off the rails. It’s how they are wired.....nithing to do with them thinking.
I did read the article, none of the goop you said is in there. You can’t compare animals, mammals to humans in that way.
LOL!
287 is the new 40.
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