There has been a shocking new twist in the mystery of the 500-year-old ‘immortal’ polar sharks.
Yep, just when you might have thought sharks were scary enough, turns out there’s a rare species that are capable for living for centuries.
Greenland sharks are quite widely an unknown, swimming mysteriously in the Atlantic Ocean and Arctic seas. And with a growth possible of up to a whopping 23-feet in length and 1.2 tonnes weight, one of the beasts was found to have lived since 1624. Now that shark has lived through some big times.
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Researchers at the University of Copenhagen found the oldie and used carbon dating to determine its ancient age.
Scientists have spent plenty of time trying to figure out just how Greenland sharks are able to live for so long, as many reckon it could help us humans have longer lives ourselves.
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It’s previously been thought that the sharks’ muscle metabolic activity might be their fountain of youth with the popular biology theory ‘pace of life’ linking longevity of life to the speed of metabolic functions.
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But in a bit of a twist, researchers are exploring that the secret to their long lives is due to the deep and low temperatures of water the beasts live in.
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Lurking in the dark oceans between -1.8 to 7.5 degrees, the teams reckon this could be slowing down chemical and biological reasons in their bodies. Oh, and because of these conditions, they’re not exactly getting disturbed by humans particularly often.
University of Manchester professor in the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, Holly Shiels told Le Monde: “They're in a place that's hard to access for humans. And they have very few natural predators other than humans. So they really can live as long as possible.”
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However, she did say that while the metabolism being slowed down by the cold and the sharks have a very slow heart rate, it doesn’t necessarily explain totally just why they are living for centuries.
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“There are other species that live up in the same waters as the Arctic, and have the same heart rate, that have lifespans that are 20 years, 40 years,” she explained. “So there's still something unusual about the shark."
Lead researcher Ewan Camplisson, a PhD student at the University of Manchester, said the ultimate goal is to protect the sharks and in order to do that, we need to ‘better understand them’.
“By studying the Greenland shark and its heart, we may be able to better understand our own cardiovascular health,” he added
“These are issues that become progressively more common and severe with increasing age.”
Jess Battison