What is the longest lived animal?

Four hundred years ago, the world was a very different place. In England, William Shakespeare’s company was performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the first time. In Japan, the Edo period began. And in the cold waters off of Iceland, there lived a simple quahog clam.

In 2006, that clam was dredged up by Icelandic fishermen and became the longest-lived animal known to science. By counting the growth rings on the clams shell, scientists were able to determine that the clam was between 405 and 410 years old when it was caught!

Even though scientists haven’t found another animal that comes close to this ancient clam’s lifespan, there have been other animals who have been known to live an impressively long time.

Harriet the tortoise was collected by Charles Darwin when he visited the Galapagos in 1835. She died only a few years ago at the age of 175.

Charlie, a blue macaw, is thought to have been purchased by Winston Churchill two years before the outbreak of World War II. Today Charlie is 110 years old, which would make Charlie the oldest parrot on record.

The longest-lived mammals are now thought to be bowhead whales. The oldest known specimen is thought to have been 211 years old when it died!

Hanako was a koi fish who lived in Japan. When Hanako was born, the United States of America didn’t exist as a country yet. When she died in 1977, she was 226 years old!

And if we venture outside the animal kingdom, we can find even older living things: fungus oven 8,000 years old, trees older than 100,000 years, and even one species of bacteria that is thought to be 250 million years old!