Can you imagine living for four centuries? A team of scientists from Bangor University’s School of Ocean Sciences believe they have found an animal which did just that, a quahog clam, Arctica islandica, which was living and growing on the seabed in the cold waters off the north coast of Iceland for around 400 years.
When this animal was a juvenile, King James I replaced Queen Elizabeth I as English monarch, Shakespeare was writing his greatest plays Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth and Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for espousing the view that the Sun rather than the Earth was the centre of the universe.
400 years? You might live long enough to see an end to corruption in our government. Nah. Never mind.
[edit: see comments guide]
Ren, you sound silly. Clam up will ya.
Please tell me the chosen image does not represent our usual wonderful human behavior of “Wow!! Look how old this clam is. And, it’s still tasty.”
Humans have a desire to live forever. They always have. Where did that come from?
I had a 400 year old clam at Red Lobster last week.
I think it had been dead for about 50 years, though.
You guys are a bunch of chowder heads.
Isn’t it a shame to know that it will never see 401?
Who wants to live 400 years????
Can you imagine it? I mean right now every single year you live to 100 and then more you get visited by these idiots from the news shows and every year they ask you HOW do you live SO long.
Now have that happen do you for 300 friggin years!
You would PRAY for death.
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10,
But he was happy as a clam until then!
Do they make good eatin’?
I believe it’s like a quahog, Leslie. Good chowdah – but, chop that critter up so you can eat it.
#4
“Please tell me the chosen image does not represent our usual wonderful human behavior of “Wow!! Look how old this clam is. And, it’s still tasty.””
Yup, they killed it just to see how old it was.
The arrogance of humans is endless. Oh look, a 410 y/o clam…lets kill it!! Scientists said there might be even older ones in the waters of Iceland…….not after you guy’s get through.
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Up next: Scientists kill extremely rare animal to find out the cause of its extinction!
#4 – lol!!!
But clams have neither clocks nor calendars, so they never know how old they are …
How did they tell how old it was? By the length of its beard?
#16
It’s just like when they immobilize a dog and then strap a helmet onto its head, then they use a pneumatic hammer to see how hard it has to hit before the animal dies… And this in the name of science.
I thought it was most amazing that this University has a whole team of scientists who study the growth and age of clams. Talk about excitement!
man that is hella fake
All this makes me wanna do is eat clams for dinner and then when i’m done eating the tasty flesh, put on an Alice in wonderland (that part about clams goes with the theme) puppet show with the shells and then feed the whole puppet show to my dog. Yum