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Science

Bowhead Whales May Live 200 Years 18

Posted by jamie from the but-their-corpses-are-so-useful dept.
kilroy2000 writes "This is off-topic from the usual Slashdot fare, but some readers may find it interesting. A Science News article describes how it was discovered that bowhead whales can live to be 200 years old." It looks solid because there were several independent means of measuring the age, including one test done blind. Researchers first got interested by noticing 100-year-old harpoon points still stuck in the 50-ton creatures. I wonder if they hold grudges.
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Bowhead Whales May Live 200 Years More

Bowhead Whales May Live 200 Years

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  • Certain giant tortoises have been known to have a lifespan of up to 240 years! Namely the Aldabra Giant Tortoises, Geochelone gigantea. I guess we will all be able to sleep easy tonight knowing that these animals outlive us. Or maybe we can study the genetics of these animals and increase our own lifespan? Great, then we can overcrowd ourselves even more. This along with viagra and we better start colonizing in space pretty damn soon.
  • interestingly, most larger animals live longer, metabolism also has something to do with it, generally speaking, the faster the heart of a certain animal beats the shorter they live, as an example, a slow operating tortoise will easily outlive a rather active bunny.

    Increasing the lives of humans?
    In this age of mounting stress and poor physical condition I really doubt it will happen, even with advancing medical technology.
  • Well, actually, demigods could die from accidents or injuries, classically. And I believe the key isn't to keep the telomeres from dividing, but rather find a way to reconstruct them, or generate new cells with new, full-length telomeres.

  • I was going to ask how one measured the age of harpoon wounds, then I realized that when they say harpoon "points", they actually means the age of the broken off tip of the harpoon.

    Beware, Moby Dick will be coming for you Ronald P. Ahab, C.P.A

  • Thar she blows! Har! (Score:4)

    by Vuarnet ( 207505 ) <luis_milan@ho[ ]il.com ['tma' in gap]> on Wednesday October 18, 2000 @08:38AM (#696702) Homepage
    I wonder what it would be like if we ever translated the whale songs into something we could understand. Hmm...

    - Hmpf. Kids today. Always swimming around, playing with those humans in their pesky boats, always getting catched and eaten. In my days we weren't harpooned by modern equipment. No, sir! We were hunted by lone men, armed with wooden spears with flint points. Here, check them on my back, I've still have a few lodged somewhere. And we wouldn't even swim away! No, we crawled up into the ice and fought hand-to-fin with them! Why I remember that summer of '88... 1888, that is... uh... what was the subject again?

  • Re:Breaking News! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    2000 years? pah. If it doesn't live for more than 250 million i'm not impressed anymore

  • Ummm (Score:1)

    by SigVn ( 166099 )
    How did they get the harpoon tips out.

    I mean prsumably they were inside the whale in question.... After a hundred years or so you would think that skin whould grow around the harpoon.....

    Casue that whole point was kinda vague
  • Some giant redwoods live well in excess of 2000 years. I know they're just trees, but its eerie thinking they were around in biblical times.
  • heh, the giant Sequioa Trees in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains (not the ones in Spain =-) ), are known to live almost 2000 years!

  • How few are "a few"?

    I thought more whales were caught by Americans every year than by Japanese. (Perhaps not as many tons, though?)

  • The tips were found in whales caught by the native Alaskans. They are permitted to catch a few every year under the protection act which governs the preservation of this whale species.
  • The only thing stopping humans from living this long, or even being immortal, is a part of the cell called the telemeter. It is a cell structure of a given length which divides in two with the cell, and eventually, becomes too small to divide further. When you run out of cells to divide, your body begins to erode, so to say, and you slowly begin to die. In cancerous cells, however, the telemeters do not shorten, causing the cell to divide unchecked. If only we could control this division, we could make people that could not only live forever, but would have eternal youth. Cancer wouldn't be so bad if only it didn't kill you. If only there were some sort of shot or pill to trigger and stop cell division, we could all be more or less demigods. The applications of such a thing are just mindblowing.

  • Where's the love? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I knew a lot of bowheaded whales in the sororities back in college, but none of them were older than 22 or so. And while they may have been poked occassionally, they were never harpooned. That's just mean.

  • the faster the heart of a certain animal beats the shorter they live

    I've read things that indicate that the specific connection you mention is not causation. It's that the slower animals had less to deal with, and had more chance to develop life-prolonging mutations that payed off.

    Take, for example, the rabbit and the tortoise. It may very well not be that the tortoise was slower and thus lived longer due to a slower metabolism. It could very well be that the tortoise is just slower because it has superior protection. And since it has superior protection, it does not have to get fast to get away. (This is unlike the rabbit who has to either not be seen or run really really fast in order to survive in the short-term). And then since the tortoise does not have to worry about as much, the mutations that contribute to longer-life pay off more in evolution

    Otherwise, how would you explain that a pigeon has an maximum lifespan of 69 years, while a bear only has a maximum of 31?? The pigeon has a much higher metabolism. However, I'd point out that a pigeon might have a much higher chance of 'not having to worry about things' so much since it can fly away from problems easier than a bear.

    So, you could say the better defense leads to longer life. The tortoise has a shell, the pigeon can fly, but the poor bear can only fight it out.

  • Well, I apologize for my spelling errors; this is what happens when my school's AP Bio course gets nixed. Accidents and such will still take lives. Healing could be iniated by one of those special shots I was talking about. This is why I claimed this was so cool. It also is more or less impossible. Don't look for this kind of technology any time soon.

  • Well, genius, if this is what telemeters do, why don't you explain telomeres to us?

    (Hint, hint.)

    As for your demigods statement, bear in mind that that isn't entirely true. 1. Injuries and accidents will still take lives. 2. If your cells don't divide anymore, or do so under controlled conditions, how will you heal properly?

    Food for thought, buddy.

  • Sex cells, being haploid rather than diploid, are different than "regular" cells. A woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have; none are even "cloned" from previously produced eggs. Sperm are produced by cells that are not sperm cells; they do not reproduce by cell division, unlike many other cells.
  • Okay, sperm cells are not produced by other sperm cells, but they are created by cellular division. As a matter of fact, the cells that create sperm are among some of the busiest (in terms of cell division) cells in the human body! And we all know that men can be fertile for over a hundred years (look in Guiness if you don't believe me). And like a previous reply has mentioned, what about telomeres [uchicago.edu]?p&g t;

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