Bowhead Whale Bowhead whales can live more than 200 years–making them one of the longest-living mammals on Earth.
The ocean quahog is a fist-size clam that can live to be 500 years or older. Some researchers believe the sturdy quahog's secret to a long life is its ability to protect its proteins from damage.
Estimates of sponge longevity vary quite a bit, but are often in the thousands of years. One study in the journal Aging Research Reviews notes a deep-sea sponge from the species Monorhaphis chuni lived to be 11,000 years old. Yes, a sponge is an animal—and it has a remarkable life-span.
Bowhead Whale
Bowhead whales can live for over 200 years, which is longer than any other mammal.
Greenland Shark
It is the longest living vertebrate on earth. They owe their longevity in life as they grow very slowly. In fact, they grow about 1cm every year and mature after they are 100 years old. They reach sexual maturity after they are 150 years old.
Some corals can live for up to 5,000 years, making them the longest living animals on Earth. Scientific studies of elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) in the Caribbean and off the coast of Florida show that coral genotypes can survive longer than expected.
Labord's chameleon has the shortest lifespan of all land vertebrates. They grow extremely rapidly, reach sexual maturity, breed, and then die. Labord's chameleon is named after a French explorer named Jean Laborde. He was the one who first spotted these reptiles in their forest habitat in Madagascar.
The First Animals
Sponges were among the earliest animals. While chemical compounds from sponges are preserved in rocks as old as 700 million years, molecular evidence points to sponges developing even earlier.
This week, researchers crowned a new record holder for quick growth: Susan Milius at Science News reports that the turquoise killifish, Nothobranchius furzeri, found in Mozambique, can reach maturity in just 14 days, the fastest of any known vertebrate animal.
Aquatic animals. Glass sponges found in the East China Sea and Southern Ocean have been estimated to be more than 10,000 years old.
"The discovery of this new fossil suggests to us that the evolution of multicellular animals had occurred at least one billion years ago and that early events prior to the evolution of animals may have occurred in freshwater like lakes rather than the ocean," Wellman said.
Bluey, an Australian cattle dog, entered the Guinness Book of World Records by living to the ripe old age of 29 years and 5 months, setting the record for oldest dog ever.
For Ross, marmosets are ideal research subjects because they have a similar metabolism and get similar age-related diseases as humans. Marmosets can live up to 22 years, but they show signs of getting older, such as stretching more and leaping less often from branch to branch, as early as 10 years old.
Asian-Americans top the list at 86.5 years, with Latinos following closely behind at 82.8 years. Third of the five groups are Caucasians, with an average life expectancy of about 78.9 years, followed by Native Americans at 76.9 years. The final group, African Americans, has a life expectancy of 74.6 years.
The strongest land animal in the world is the elephant. The typical Asian elephant has 100,000 muscles and tendons arranged along the length of the trunk, enabling it to lift almost 800 pounds.
Although many species of jellyfish have some capacity to reverse aging and revert to a larval state, most of them lose this ability once they reach sexual maturity. However, Turritopsis dohrnii appears to be the only known species able to repeatedly revert back into a larval stage even after sexual reproduction.
In 2018, naked mole-rats were identified as the first mammal to defy the Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality, and achieve negligible senescence. It has been speculated, however, that this may be simply a "time-stretching" effect primarily due to their very slow (and cold-blooded and hypoxic) metabolism.
Plant life consisted mostly of ferns, conifers and small shrubs. Animals included sharks, bony fish, arthropods, amphibians, reptiles and synapsids. The first true mammals would not appear until the next geological period, the Triassic.
Sea sponges have been around a long time, but they are at least old enough to be the longest-existing creatures on Earth. The second animal on earth would be the jellyfish, it existed even 505 million years ago. New fossil evidence of jellyfish goes back over half a billion years.
Earth is estimated to be 4.54 billion years old, plus or minus about 50 million years. Scientists have scoured the Earth searching for the oldest rocks to radiometrically date.
Lithobates catesbeianus is an animal that cannot sleep.
The new research shows that dolphins have the longest memory yet known in any species other than people. Elephants and chimpanzees are thought to have similar abilities, but they haven't yet been tested, said study author Jason Bruck, an animal behaviorist at the University of Chicago.
And the strongest known bite force of the entire animal kingdom is…. The Crocodile -- specifically, the Saltwater Crocodile (the highest recorded “live” bite of 3700 PSI) and the Nile Crocodile (estimated 4000-5000 PSI)!
Some trees can live for centuries or even millennia but the secrets behind their long life spans have eluded scientists. However, new research has found that the ginkgo tree, which can live more than 1,000 years, doesn't really show any expected effects of aging — they appear to be primed for immortality.