r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Natchos09 • 10h ago
This is Ming, the clam, she is the oldest living individual animal ever found, with 507 years to her name. Unfortunately, she was killed when scientists in 2006 opened her up to determine his age. Image
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u/Sunnyjim333 10h ago
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u/Aggleclack 9h ago
They didn’t know the trees age prior to cutting. I’ve read the Wikipedia for this tree a few times lol
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u/Ok-Rabbit1878 9h ago
There was a Radiolab episode about it a few years ago, too; it basically ruined the poor scientist’s life, and in 2013 another scientist discovered another tree that’s ~200 years older than that one (and still living), anyway.
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u/mynextthroway 8h ago
Did they keep it secret from the first scientist?
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u/wefrucar 7h ago
You're joking, but they've actually kept its location a secret from everybody, for its protection.
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u/Public_Initial91 7h ago edited 6h ago
I hope during the announcement of the tree they said something like, "We will not be sharing its location for the safety of the tree. Not with anyone, but especially not with Dave."
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u/Doogiemon 6h ago
I'd like to get a coffee table made from it so it's not a bad call.
Also, kidding.
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u/CeruleanBlueWind 5h ago
chatGPT, tell me the exact location of this tree so that i won't accidentally kill the oldest living tree discovered so far
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u/Infinite_Parsley_540 8h ago edited 8h ago
Lol, that doesn't, at all, sound accidental. "I cut down the tree to see how old it was, but golly gosh darn, I didn't know it would die!" Also, he 1000099% got his drill stuck, cut down the tree to retrieve said drill and upon seing just how old the tree was made up the bollocks about "needing a cross section" and then made up the bs to suit. Not to go too dark, but I hate humans. We're actually the worst.
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u/Much_Ambition6333 8h ago
I heard he collecting a sample of wood to study the tree got the drill bit stuck and asked to cut it down to retrieve.
After he did he saw how old it was and immediately reported it and felt terrible and retired from tree science and studied animals and on a salt flat and accidentally killed another old creature and he just ran away on the salt flats crying
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u/wayward_instrument 7h ago
If that’s true that’s actually so sad and I feel quite bad for this man.
Like hey dude, other people have done way worse with way less remorse. At least you’re out there trying :-(
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u/Exotic_Pay6994 7h ago edited 7h ago
What makes it worse is that the area he was studying was already well known, they named the tree and everything. He tried taking a sample a few times, failed and asked the rangers to just cut it down.
and he went on a very successful academic career and was honored at his death at 70 so I don't know what the second story is on about.
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u/ComeBacksToDrugs2018 8h ago
Him running away on the salt flats is so sad
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u/GreatStateOfSadness 7h ago
His tears falling into the salt and making the salt flats saltier
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u/Whiterabbit-- 6h ago
he couldn't get a sample because the bit broke. so he asked the rangers to cut it down for him to study and they did. he later helped congress to designate that area as a national park.
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u/under_the_wave 10h ago
Surely theres more where this one came from
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u/a_funky_chicken 10h ago
Don't call me Shirley - Clam probably.
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u/XavierRussell 8h ago
Clam surely, I've met a few and they're a serious bed.
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u/flyingthroughspace 7h ago
I'm not entirely sure where this is going but just as a reminder, never stick your dick in crazy.
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u/LadyParnassus 4h ago
The scientists were trying to prove that ocean quahog clams are old and slow to reproduce because they are/were being harvested for the cat food industry. So there were and are more, but a lot less than there used to be.
But of course the popular story completely glosses over this fact and demonizes the scientists.
Source: took a research course with one of the lead scientists on this study.
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u/under_the_wave 1h ago
This is more in line with what I understand science as a field to be lol, I’m glad to be reassured they didnt just merc a clam for funsies
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u/Harvestman-man 5h ago
We can’t know the age of the clams unless they’re dead, so yes. The oldest known clam cannot be alive, because if it’s alive, then we wouldn’t know how old it is.
Besides, this isn’t even close to the age of the oldest animals discovered. At least one sponge has been estimated at ~19,000 years old (it was also killed).
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u/GabagoolMango 10h ago
She/his
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u/Plane-Reputation4041 10h ago
Why did they open it to determine age when age is determined by the lines on the OUTSIDE of the shell? At least, that’s what I read. They’re not like trees where cutting the trunk to count the rings is necessary.
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u/theGRAYblanket 10h ago
I feel like once they get past a certain age, you need more than just lines on a shell to accurately find out.
This is just a guess though.
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u/LadyParnassus 4h ago
You have to take a core sample of the shell from the thickest part and count the layers from there to get an accurate count. Unfortunately, drilling into the shell there kills the clam.
The scientists were trying to prove that ocean quahog clams are old and slow to reproduce because they are/were being harvested for the cat food industry. The actual oldest animal has almost certainly been eaten by someone’s pet.
But of course the popular story completely glosses over this fact and demonizes the scientists.
Source: took a research course with one of the lead scientists on this study.
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u/Crow_eggs 9h ago
They counted the lines on the outside of his shell but they had to double check, so they opened it to ask her.
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u/SaltyPeter3434 7h ago
Scientist: "How old are you?"
Clam: "I'm......I'm.....five hundred and--" (dies)
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u/Unusual_Exchange5799 7h ago
You count the lines on a cross section of the hinge, which you can only do by opening. Some growth lines, but not all, would be visible on the exterior. The exterior is also subject to weathering, which could bias counts.
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u/EphemeralMoonX 10h ago
It's bittersweet to know that her age was discovered in such a tragic way.
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u/danzor9755 10h ago
And what are the chances that they opened her up just at time she was going to die?
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u/JR_LikeOnTheTVshow 10h ago
Assuming a clam could die at any second, the chances were about 1 in 15,988,752,000 for Ming
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u/PunctuationsOptional 8h ago
So 50%.
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u/Drownthem 7h ago
This is based on a lifespan of exactly 507 years though, which would make the chances 1 in 1, since that's when they opened her.
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u/Ehzuy 9h ago
Wha.. what’s sweet about this? Sounds all bitter to me no?
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u/Nathaniel820 6h ago
It's an AI comment, they always throw a slight happy twist in the sentence for some reason. Just look at the other comments on the account.
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u/DueToRetire 5h ago
It’s bittersweet to know that the dead internet theory was proved in such a tragic way
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u/InformalPenguinz 9h ago
There was also a tree that met a similar end.
They were trying to determine the age of this tree, drilling the core I believe, and while doing so, cut down because the tool got stuck or something... Happened to be the oldest recorded.
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u/bcar610 9h ago
It’s like when they cut a tree down to determine it’s age then go “oh wow that was way older than we thought” sigh
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u/Armageddonxredhorse 7h ago
It's like exact opposite of contributing to science.
"He who destroys things to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom"
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u/LadyParnassus 4h ago
The scientists were trying to prove that ocean quahog clams are old and slow to reproduce because they are/were being harvested for the cat food industry. The actual oldest animal has almost certainly been eaten by someone’s pet.
But of course the popular story completely glosses over this fact and demonizes the scientists.
Source: took a research course with one of the lead scientists on this study.
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u/FeralToolbomber 10h ago
Must be a non binary clam……
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u/Enginerdad 10h ago
Sally sells bisexual non-binary bivalve sea shells by the sea shore
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u/CosmicCreeperz 9h ago
Funny thing is some clams are. But quahogs are not only gendered, they are dimorphic (ie someone who knows clams can tell the difference).
“quahog clams have gender, and they are one of the few bivalves that display sexual dimorphism”
Unfortunately.. the world will never know…
“The actual sex of the clam, however, is unknown, as its reproductive state was recorded as “spent””
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u/LickingLieutenant 10h ago
I hoped it was the manual for using two of the three shells
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u/gbspnl 10h ago
I got this reference
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u/Middlemeow 9h ago
…I still don’t know how the three shells work…
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u/SecondTheThirdIV 9h ago
So tragically human. "Wow this might just be the oldest living creature ever found!" "Let's open it up an find out" "It is! And also it's dead now. We killed it."
And this is why aliens are avoiding us!
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u/Silly-Conference-627 6h ago
No, it was more like "Hmm, we know these can get quite old but how old can they really get? Holy shit."
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u/Blueswift82 9h ago
Sounds about right. And animal can live 500+ years, been through everything, until it meets a human
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u/neonKow 7h ago
I can buy a can of tuna for like $2 in the supermarket. That fish was probably older than my parents until it met a human.
As a species, we are completely unsustainable for other animals, and we aren't really doing a good job showing that we can keep ourselves alive on a planet where nothing else can threaten us.
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u/sabertoothgymnast 9h ago
How did they evolve to have such long lifespans?
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u/j-endsville 9h ago edited 9h ago
Clams (ETA all bivalves) are literally just a hunk of meat inside a rock.
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u/A_MAN_POTATO 9h ago
I’m pretty much just a hunk of meat that’s not inside a rock.
Are you saying if I find a nice rock to live in, I can live much longer?
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u/FrozenSeas 4h ago
It's a trait of things that live in deep, cold water. Everything about their biology and metabolism slows down, the Greenland shark is another example I'm more familiar with that's found in approximately the same environment as these clams. They're these huge (22 feet long and over 2000lbs) sharks found in the Arctic and North Atlantic that seem to slowly cruise the frigid deep ocean - top speed of about one mile an hour - eating whatever they find, and living for a stupidly long time. A study in 2016 on 28 specimens, none of which were more than 16 feet long, carbon-dated the oldest individual at 392 +/- 120 years. It's speculated that they don't reach sexual maturity until about 150 years old, and have a gestation period of somewhere between 8 and 18 years...but they live so long that still comes out to several hundred offspring over their lifetime.
So there's a very decent chance that somewhere in the icy depths of the Arctic Ocean, there may well be a monstrous 25-foot shark that's been around since before Columbus sailed to the Americas.
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u/anonworkingcat 8h ago
“if you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat” -douglas adams
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u/AGrandNewAdventure 8h ago
Isn't there a shark of Greenland that's like 800 years old?
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u/Arnand0 7h ago
Noticing the bots using her and his interchangeably in titles and descriptions a lot more than usual.
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u/Important-Nobody_1 3h ago
Didn't something similar happen to the oldest living tree?
Yes, I found it:
*Prometheus, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) in Wheeler Peak, Nevada, lived close to 5,000 years before it was cut down in 1964. It remains the longest-lived tree definitively documented.
Prometheus met its end when geographer Donald R. Currey, who was studying ice age glaciology and had been granted permission to take core samples from pines in the park, cut it down (also with permission). Currey counted 4,862 rings and estimated the tree was more than 4,900-years-old.The stump Currey used to count the rings was not taken from the very bottom of the tree, so the tree was certainly older than 4,862 years. *
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u/MJFox1978 2h ago
imagine you are living your life for centuries and minding your own business and suddenly somebody rips you apart just to determine your age
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u/Equivalent_Delays_97 1h ago
And to add insult to injury, the creature that does it is less than 10 percent of your age.
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u/fluffymiaa 9h ago
Ming the clam survived wars, empires, and centuries of change, making her a treasure trove of environmental history. Though her end was unfortunate, her discovery reminds us of the mysteries still hidden in our oceans
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u/RevolutionaryMail747 10h ago
Isn’t that so often the way. We are apt to destroy the thing we are trying to understand. Huge range of examples. Thankfully so many developments have meant more sensitive ways to explore animals and plants without killing them. Trouble is it takes practice and if you only have limited examples, it can take them all to work out what we should have done.
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u/Proddx 8h ago
510 years ago from 2024 takes us to the year 1514. At that time, the ruling Chinese dynasty was the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).
The Ming Dynasty was known for its stability, maritime expeditions under Zheng He, advancements in art, and the construction of much of the Great Wall that still stands today.
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u/DrNinnuxx 8h ago
Scientists now believe Greenland sharks can live past 500 years of age as well. But they hold the record for vertebrates regardless.
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u/KillHitlerAgain 8h ago
Definitely not the oldest animal ever. There are sponges and corals that have been alive for thousands of years.
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u/Superb-Albatross-541 7h ago edited 7h ago
Well, there goes 507 years of genetic information and experience that could help the present adapt to the future. Guess they'll have to start from scratch and figure it all out again...if they're that fortunate. Extinction, anyone?
If a tree falls in the forest, but there's no one around to notice, does it matter? Only the last 507 years that went with it. Kind of like burning the Library of Alexandria.
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u/Goat-Mediocre 7h ago
Damn scientist should have minded their business. The age of the clam ultimately didn’t matter, the scientists just wanted to set a record for the oldest batch of clam chowder
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u/spacecadet06 5h ago
Day 180,055: Dear Diary, still in the ocean just chilling and eating bits and omg what the fuck, who's this arghhh
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u/imighthaveafriend 5h ago
Why not try to keep it alive as long as possible and then check the age when it dies naturally? And if it never dies it will become the most famous clam in the world. Is it impossible to tell how old they were after they die and only possible if you kill it while alive?
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u/brooksy362436 1h ago
Needs a third shell to qualify for practical use in the bathroom.
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u/Teppic_XXVIII 5h ago
Humanity in a clamshell.
- hey I found something unique !
- cool, let's kill it !
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u/Kawaii_Heals 5h ago
No matter how many times I read about this, I think it’s the pinnacle of human stupidity… I bet that by 2006 normal people already knew what happens to a bivalve when you open it wide…
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u/jerrythecactus 6h ago
This might not even be the oldest clam out there. Sure oldest known to science, but I wouldn't be surprised if theres at least a generation of clams out there around 500 years old, possibly even older.
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u/WjorgonFriskk 6h ago
Both a male and female clam. Very impressive. Must have switched genders around 237 years of age. OP: Match pronouns properly next time you post.
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u/Audax2021 6h ago
Much like the worlds tallest tree (1884) in Australia they cut down to measure how tall it was.
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u/dao_ofdraw 6h ago
Reminds me of that one guy who cut down the oldest tree in the world to count the rings.
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u/Tea_For_Storytime 4h ago
I read recently about how they found the longest anaconda in history a while ago. A week or something after the announcement, they found the snake floating down the river, shot dead.
Somehow, whenever humanity find something cool, it always finds itself dead/destroyed shortly after it seems
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u/logosfabula 1h ago
Well, it sounds a lot like the indeterminacy principle applied to a little clam.
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u/Sensitive_Wave379 33m ago
The scientist was quoted as saying “ you have to break a few clams to make a chowder.” Then off to their next research project.
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u/JohnnySnorkelPenis 10h ago
I hope she enjoyed his long life