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 species26by 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 fisha group that comprises roughly 12,000 species. TodaysPopular 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? Thats 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 thoughtthe 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 fishs 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 otolithsmall calcified structures that help fish balance while they swimfrom 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: Theres 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 matchvalidating 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 impedesor outright blocksupstream movement to spawning grounds. (See "Rare whales can live to nearly 200, eye tissue reveals.")
Indeed, bigmouth buffalo are often called trash fish, because theyre 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 riversdisplacing 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 buffalos 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
I was driving through my neighborhood a few years ago when I noticed a small commotion in an older gentleman’s backyard. Several people had stopped to see what was going on and curiosity got the best of me, so I pulled over, too. When I asked what was going on, someone told me the owner’s rather large tortoise had escaped his pen (again). The owner and one of his friend didn’t have much trouble catching the wayward tortoise, but he was so big, they had to bring him back to the enclosure in a wheelbarrow.
I helped them lift the tortoise out of the wheelbarrow and put him back in the pen. Both the owner and his wife were in their 70s, and it was obvious the tortoise would outlive both of them. Someone else told me the couple have custody of the tortoise arranged through the next two generations of the family, since he’ll be around long after they’re gone, and yes, they’ve set aside money to help cover their pet’s long-term (and I do mean long-term) care.
They can be quite good, are cheap, and always available. They are considered a challenge to clean.
Something of a gamble to eat because of a low risk of Haff Disease (rhabdomyolysis) which is why you most likely not ever see it for sale for human consumption.
They counted both the special scale cells which grow new layers yearly and cross-referenced with carbon dating so they match each other.
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