Continuing our theme of really old animals that live in the sea, the world record for “oldest age-verified animal” is now held by a clam. The bivalve in question, an Atlantic quahog, lived to the ripe old age of 405, and was going strong until it was inadvertently killed by marine biologists dredging the ocean floor for samples. Age was deduced by counting growth layers (analogous to tree rings) in the animal’s shell.
The Daily Telegraph’s coverage leads with this:
A British scientific team discovered the 405-year-old clam, named after the Chinese dynasty and not the former Liberal Democrat leader, at the bottom of the ocean, and hope its longevity will reveal the secrets of ageing.
Leaving behind the impenetrable inside jokes about British politics, the article later picks up the biogerontological thread and continues:
The shellfish was dredged as part of a study into climate change over the centuries but because of its extreme age it is now also being investigated by a team of biologists looking into ageing.
“Al rushed up to my office to announce that they had found a record-breaker,” said team member Prof Chris Richardson. “If, in Arctica islandica, evolution has created a model of successful resistance to the damage of ageing, it is possible that an investigation of the tissues of these real life Methuselahs might help us to understand the processes of ageing.”
Richard Faragher, a gerontologist at Brighton University working with the Bangor team, said: “Most of what we know about the ocean quahog is what it tastes like. We need to find out how it retains muscle strength, remains cancer-free and keeps its nervous system intact over such a long period of time.” …
Mike Foster, a spokesman for the research arm of Help the Aged, said: “This discovery is not just a curiosity – it is a chance to discover how it remains fit and healthy for hundreds of years.”
It is doubtful that this particular clam will in any way assist research in biogerontology — it died, and its flesh was discarded, long before its age was assessed. I also have my doubts that a previously unstudied, genetically intractable, ultra-long-lived organism with unusual environmental requirements will ever gain traction as a model system for the study of aging.
Nonetheless, it’s clear that this one mollusc’s lengthy tenure on the ocean floor has captured someone’s imagination: The British philanthropy Help for the Aged has made a grant of £40,000 to study the mechanisms of quahog longevity, with the hope that the clam can teach us something about how to preserve our own tissues against the ravages of time. (Hopefully, the lesson will be more portable than “live in freezing water, filter tiny amounts of plankton, and barely ever move.”)
Ouroboros 
I wonder if the tissues in that clam would have similar characteristics to tissues of other animals (non-marine animals like fly, mouse, or human). Would be interesting to compare.
-ralph
(druse.wordpress.com)
You may have eaten the world’s oldest animal, these clams are used for clam chowder! http://blogfishx.blogspot.com/2007/10/you-may-have-eaten-oldest-animal-on.html
Way to go humanity. Kill any ancient being for absolutely no useful purpose. Stupid and sinful.
absolute genius,find the oldest living animal on record and then drill a hole through it to determine exactly that,thus killing it.Top marks Bangor Uni
Yeah, it makes sense to drill holes in things that regenerate (trees), but not living organisms that are a bit more fragile (and need intact shells to survive). Kinda reminds me of the old alien probing stories…”I wonder how old this one is.” “I dunno, let’s take out it’s brain and fiddle with it for a while to find out!”
Jokes about British politics “impenetrable”? Hardly. 5 seconds research would reveal “Menzies” (Liberal Democrat leader) is pronounced “Ming”. Not American therefore no interest? There’s a surprise. Idiot.
Gavin, you judgmental piece of shit: Run out of meds, did we? I linked to an explanation of the joke, so I’m hip to the idea that a bit of research answers the question. Furthermore, inasmuch as I (a) knew the connection and (b) bothered to elucidate it for those readers who aren’t familiar with non-phonetic pronunciations of old Scottish names, I don’t think I can be accused of lacking interest. Maybe “opaque” would have been a better choice of words than “impenetrable,” but I hardly think I qualify for “idiot”. So: fuck you.
(And by the way, “Menzies” is pronounced “Mingiss,” not “Ming,” so you’re technically wrong anyway.)
yeah CODY and ALEC M.
it was already dead when they got its age. remember the first paragraph where it says they killed it by dredging?
anyways, if find it hard to stomach that in the interest of protecting the environment, they go ahead and dredge the ocean floor…kind of self-canceling isn’t it? “oh we can do whatever we want because we’re a special society working in the interest of a very sensitive marine ecosystem which we will shortly destroy by dredging indiscriminately.”
kind of like logging the redwoods eh?