Slashdot Mirror
Bowhead Whales May Live 200 Years
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.
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.
---- Stage 5 of drinking : Politics begin to appeal
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
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
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?
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
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
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
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.
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.
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.