Posted on 08/06/2019 7:51:27 AM PDT by Red Badger
According to radiocarbon dating, when the bigmouth buffalo was born, World War I had not yet broken out in Europe.
Scientists just added a large, sucker-mouthed fish to the growing list of centenarian animals that will likely outlive you and me.
A new study using bomb radiocarbon dating describes a bigmouth buffalo that lived to a whopping 112 years, crushing the previous known maximum age for the species—26—by more than fourfold.
That makes the bigmouth buffalo, which is native to North America and capable of reaching nearly 80 pounds, the oldest age-validated freshwater bony fish—a group that comprises roughly 12,000 species. Today’sPopular Stories Science & Innovation Saber-tooth surprise: Fossils redraw picture of the fearsome big cat Culture & History Ancient Maya practiced 'total war' well before climate stress Culture & History The forgotten ‘Wolf Children’ of World War II
“A fish that lives over 100 years? That’s a big deal,” said Solomon David, assistant professor at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, who was not involved in the study.
In recent years, thanks to more advanced aging techniques, scientists have discovered many species of fish live longer than originally thought—the Greenland shark, for instance, can live past 270 years. Despite the age of fish being a basic aspect of their biology, we often know very little about a fish’s expected lifespan. Carbon dating
Before the study authors even aged a single fish, they had a hunch that these fish, which live mostly in the northern U.S. and southern Canada, lived longer than thought.
The team removed thin slices of otolith—small calcified structures that help fish balance while they swim—from 386 wild-caught bigmouth buffalo, most of which were harvested by bowfishers. The researchers then used a microscope to count the growth rings on each slice of otolith. Their first counts yielded estimates of fish that live more than 80 and 90 years old. (Related: "Meet the animal that lives for 11,000 years.")
When study leader Alec Lackmann first saw those numbers, he says his reaction was: “There’s no way!”
To validate these extraordinary age estimates, Lackmann, a graduate student at North Dakota State University, and colleagues turned to bomb radiocarbon dating, a well-established method that compares the amount of the isotope carbon-14 in animal tissue to concentrations of carbon-14 released in the mid-1900s during atomic bomb testing. The method has been used to age everything from human remains to sharks.
rters, members of the perch family, are found only in the Bayou du Chien of Kentucky. Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photo Ark
They then cross-checked their otolith results with bomb radiocarbon dating and found a match—validating the estimates of a lifespan between 80 and 90 years, according to the study, recently published in the journal Communications Biology.
In total, five bigmouth buffalo surpassed 100 years of age, but a 22-pound female caught near Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, became the 112-year-old record-setter. “She was actually on the smaller end of the mature individuals,” Lackmann notes. Aging population
The first 16 fish Lackmann aged were all over 80 years old, highlighting another surprising finding: Many of the fish were born prior to 1939, suggesting a reproductive failure spanning decades. The likely cause of this failure is dam construction, which impedes—or outright blocks—upstream movement to spawning grounds. (See "Rare whales can live to nearly 200, eye tissue reveals.")
Indeed, bigmouth buffalo are often called “trash fish,” because they’re not usually eaten and are erroneously lumped in with invasive U.S. species like common carp. But Lackmann argues “we should move away from that term, because it maligns far too many native species.”
David agrees, saying that it “automatically detracts value from the organism itself,” which, in the case of the bigmouth buffalo, has an important role in maintaining the health of its native rivers—displacing invasive carp. (See the overlooked world of freshwater animals.)
Though historically unpopular as a sport fish, the bigmouth buffalo is increasingly a target of bowfishers, which shoot fish with bow-and-arrow, often at night with spotlights.
Almost all U.S. states where bigmouth buffalo are found have no limits on sport or commercial harvests. The fish is not considered threatened in the U. S. but is of special conservation concern in Canada. Lackmann and David hope the discovery of the bigmouth buffalo’s amazing longevity will help boost its profile.
“I hope that knowing this cool fact about them will have people look at this species more closely,” David says
Give a cat a fish and the cat will mope about all day because no one gave it another fish. ;-P
It’s native to Hudson Bay area, not to most of the USA.
Hard to imagine rivers I know without carp and buffalo, etc.
You first gut the fish...Skin it...Filet it...Tack it to a small pine plank with small, clean nails...Bake it at 400 degrees for 45 minutes...
Take it from the oven and let it sit for 5-7 minutes...
Take it off the plank....Throw the fish away and eat the plank....
Movie poster for “The Disgusting Ms. Limpet.”
They taste like carp, because they are a carp variant. Used to catch them in the area around Sioux Falls and the Northwest part of Iowa.
I read here about 400 year old Arctic sharks.
Fish on the Ark? I don’t think so.
Aquatic animals, insects, amphibians would all have survived the flood. It’s the land animals and birds, that Noah would have needed to save. And it’s not like he needed every kind of wolf/dog or every kind of horse, because those breeds all descended from the same genetic potential.
the oldest age-validated freshwater bony fish,..............
For the most part only Asian cultures eat them.
It’s a mammal, but Bowhead whales have an average lifespan of over 200 years. Back in the 80’s, Alaskan wildlife biologists discovered stone harpoon points embedded in a freshly killed whale near Barrow.
When I was younger, one of my friends had a parrot that they kept inheriting. If memory serves me, the bird was originally acquired by by friend’s great grandfather. They didn’t know how old the parrot was, but someone in the family estimated it at about 135 years.
The rule for pets should be nothing that is stronger than me or will outlive me.
We had a parrot that we ‘inherited’ from a neighbor, who inherited it from another neighbor, who had raised it from the egg.
We really didn’t know how old it was, but assumed it to be 50+ when it died.................
While I am not saying it isn’t rare, fish that live over 100 years on average are known... Orange Roughy for example are known to live up to nearly 150 years.
“Before I would fully believe this heretofore unknown longevity of the Bigmouth Buffalo, I’d question the veracity of the carbon dating method employed.”
So they caught a fish, killed it and carbon dated it. Does anyone see a problem with this?
I DID read the article...I am responding to THIS EXACT QUOTE FROM IT:
“A fish that lives over 100 years? That’s a big deal,” said Solomon David, assistant professor at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, who was not involved in the study.
That was funny.
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