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Clam That Was Killed Determining Its Age Was Over 100 Years Older Than Estimated
schwit1 writes "In 2006, climate change experts from Bangor University in north Wales found a very special clam while dredging the seabeds of Iceland. At that time scientists counted the rings on the inside shell to determine that the clam was the ripe old age of 405. Unfortunately, by opening the clam which scientists refer to as 'Ming,' they killed it instantly. Cut to 2013, researchers have determined that the original calculations of Ming's age were wrong, and that the now deceased clam was actually 102 years older than originally thought. Ming was 507 years old at the time of its demise."
What was the point of examining this individual animal?
Ever heard of it?
It took 7 years for scientists to count to 507 (the rings the clamshell form). I'm glad my math skills are superior. It must be all that metric math in the UK...
Ain't gettin' that in your basket of steamers!
There are monsters and they be us!
I am a scientist myself, but even I feel slightly bit disturbed by this realisation - that the oldest animal on Earth was killed in the experiment. I don't know why, I guess I have some kind of respect for the uniqueness of the status of this animal.
Science 1, Nature 0
THL phish sticks
Our duty is clear: we must capture and kill as many clams as possible to locate an even older clam, thus obviating any guilt about having killed the oldest clam!
"Unfortunately, by opening the clam which scientists refer to as 'Ming,' they killed it instantly."
I hope they had some cocktail sauce on hand. That or a little lemmon.
Science destroys to understand. LHC smashes particles to examine their innards.Biologists dissect cadavers to examine their innards. Geologists smash rocks to examine their innards.
In this case, the fact that the animal was still alive should have been indication enough that science should leave the old boy alone, or attempt only explicitly non-destructive examination. This sounds a lot like Indiana Jones's style archaeology...
"In the end, there is simply no weapon more devastating than the truth, delivered in just the right way." - tnk1
Shoot first. After the damage is done "Gee, maybe I was a little hasty."
RIP the world economy.
507 years is pretty old, but not quite as old as Prometheus : a ~5000 year old tree that was cut down in the 1960's so that it's rings could be counted. At the time of its demise, it was the world's oldest known living organism, and (as far as I know) no older organism is known to exist.
They killed the animal to measure on the inside, which they thought would be easier, but:
on the second count, the researchers concentrated on the growth rings on the outside of the shell.
So, the more precise measurement came from the outside, and they killed the oldest living animal for nothing but stupidity. I sincerely hope that instead of accolades, they get nothing but scorn from their colleagues.
...
There was a scientist who cut down the oldest non-clonal living tree in the world, a bristlecone pine in the White Mountains in California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(tree) It was about 5000 years old. They knew it was old but didn't exactly know how old it was but they sure did when they cut it down. D'oh! Even years later people would meet him and say, "Hey, weren't you the guy who..."
That was a merciless thing to do to a clam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Clone
Trees can't spit, though.
Sent from my PDP-11
And they call themselves scientists?! How do they know that the clam wasn't already dead when they opened the box... erhm, I mean the shell?
you've got to give that clam some air once in awhile!
Science never gets wrong or makes an error, you insensitive clod.
They can drip sap on you and yours. Trees have been known to work closely with birds, producing something that rhymes with spit. Don't think for one second that trees are harmless.
rewriting history since 2109
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Tough as old boots, or like a fine vintage wine?
We need to be told.
by the new FOSS operating system, MING (MING Is Not GNU)
....who cares where they come down? That's not my department." says Wernher Von Braun.
(ok, not exactly the same scientific disciplines here, for sure....but the mindset is certainly close enough.)
How many clam years is 507?
Considering how old this clam is, it has been around for longer than the creation of the US itself. I think that this is the same clam that saved Peter Griffin and never shut up. I think the reason they killed it was because they got tired of hearing it talk. Or do I have the characters mixed up?
I would have loved to see how things changed over time/
poor clam grew old enough to watch it friends, parents, family and entire generation die off leaving it alone yet around to become a great great great great great great.....(insert more greats) grandparent, and then as a final anticlimax it was taken from its natural habitat and killed to satiate the curiosities of a few whitecoats in the name of science. humans are inumane. shame on them! at least the clam didn't have to live to endure having the the makeup industry test its cosmetic products on it like the poor piglets.
Couldn't they have chipped off a tiny piece of it's shell and used radiocarbon dating?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Obviously happy with it's situation to live for over 500+ years, or no wrist to cut.
Christian's heaven, where one meets with their family, long gone dog's and cat's for eternity.
There's a point where total bliss and being with the same people would get a bit old,
500 years of that there would have to be some out.
Islams heaven is.. well only so long they stay virgins and hand fed grapes has got to
get old, again 500 years of that there has to be an out.
I asked a friend of mine an Aleut from Alaska what their after life was, he said the belief is to come back as
Eagles, Moose, whatever (Animism); now that has it's own out as it's a normal life span of that animal then another go.
Stuck as a Clam the happiest day of it's life after 507 years could of very well have been when it was slit with a knife.
http://xkcd.com/889/
He was delicious.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sewious!
It's a type of clam known to live extremely long lives that people are studying to understand aging. It was part of a haul of clams caught on a field trip of Bangor University’s School of Ocean Sciences. And it's a clam. You know, one of those things we catch and eat by the millions every year without shedding a tear.
But God forbid a scientist kills one and actually learns something. And since one of the many things we might learn is how the climate has changed over the last 500 years, we get to blame climate science.
In summary:
Kill one clam that turns out to be really old add to our understanding of the oceans and climate: Evil, arrogant, and self-centered!
WTF?
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
A clam's entire sensory apparatus is very simplistic compared to what you experience as a human being.
For a clam, there isn't much sensory input. A basic aspect of its life is completely cutting itself off from the outside world.
Its life was a repetitive series of shell openings and closings. The flavor of various things floating in told it whether to intake or expel seawater. The threats of various predators told it whether to shut very quickly or to stay a bit open for the purpose of expelling seawater.
Its internal organs were probably healthy. It likely had no recollection of the ups and downs of pains and aches. Things we're used to as human beings, that we even use to mark turning points in our lives.
It likely had no sense of the world's existence beyond the approach of sustenance or poison, the clamoring of various threats, and the terrain of whatever was immediately behind it (toward the hinge of the shell). It would be a stretch to consider it to be a sentient being, or one possessing self-awareness.
Even its reproductive cycles were involuntary spurts of either eggs or sperms, just released blindly into the water based on temperature and food supply.
The "happiness" of a clam is entirely due to the low margin for error inherent in a system with truly very few variables.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
I bet with a little white wine sauce, it would still be pretty tasty. Polish it off with a little chardonnay.
I've been assured by the esteemed physicists of Slashdot that entropy means atoms can only make things that live 100 years at most.
What kind of asshole kills something just to check its age ?
The kind of asshole who doesn't deserve to live.
Poe's Law may be relevant here
But it's worth noting that these clams are fished commercially:
People do eat quahogs, although this is more common in North America, Iceland and Norway than in the UK. Commercial fisheries for the bivalve suddenly increased enormously in the mid-1970s, and have remained at those levels ever since.
As a vegetarian scientist, I'm actually a bit uncomfortable with field expeditions to collect (and kill) scientific specimens. But in this case, the scientists may actually be saving far more of these clams (e.g. from commerical fishing) than they are killing themselves - by raising awareness of the age of these clams.
As a vegetarian, how do you feel about eating still living fresh vegetables?
Odds are there are 1000s more around the same age or older, sucking dirty water somewhere else out there.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
some people here have brains evolvoved as much as the one of a clam!
I was wondering - why did this clam live to a ripe old age? Can all clams live for centuries if they aren't killed by chance (predators, starvation, what-have-you)? Or are clams like most animals in that they grow old and eventually die, even in the best of environments, but it is a really slow process (i.e. like how 20 years to a dog might be 70 years to a human?)
Also, what is it about underwater life that many of the underwater creatures live so long: Maximum life span in animals?
The longer you can keep your mouth shut, the longer you'll live.
As a vegetarian, how do you feel about eating still living fresh vegetables?
True extremist vegans eat only inorganic food, made of metal and stone.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
People in the past have happily killed animals. The only reason your statement is true is because people have not had to kill an animal themselves. Even the pet is killed ("put down") by the vet and not the owner. If the people would no longer have access to supermarket meat but only to (live) cows on pasture and living chickens, it would not take years before they decided that killing them for the meat to EAT is better than trying to become a vegetarian for most people.
By the way, the "sanctity of life" is a HUMAN invention. There is nothing in nature that hints to such a thing. Life throws away 90+% of life very early, before anything grows up. It's nature's QA process: instead of trying to perfect the production process, just mass-produce WAY more than needed and then throw away 90% of it.
I'm not saying we have to live by that, not at all! We received a brain so what we do with it is all up to us. I think we may even not have to worry about hindering natural selection in those species we deem important enough to prevent all this mass-death (ourselves first of all). We have computers and science, at some point (very soon - in nature terms) we'll be able to do much or all (or even better) than nature does by simulating selection and using the results to improve our genes, maybe even in the living organism (where there are trillions of cells all with their own copy of the DNA so that's a challenge to change them all, or at least the relevant ones in relevant places). And someday hopefully we'll be able to grow not the animal but just its meat.
I understand the uniqueness, but isn't it better to kill something that had more than enough life already, rather than something that didn't have the chance to live so much?
Seriously, we routinely kill and consume clams by the millions.
How is killing something that was alive just to find out how old it is a good thing? I mean, certainly they must have known that opening it was going to, or was certainly very liable to kill it, so really, it seems to me like they just went and killed it just because they were curious.
I mean, I know it was just clam, but this still somehow seems so full of stupid that I have no words for it.
There could be life forms as far advanced beyond ourselves as we are beyond the clam elsewhere in this universe, and somehow I think that we'd find it rather morally objectionable if one of them decided just go and off an exceptional one of us simply because they happened to be able to, and were idly curious about some aspect of our biology.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Dark Souls tried to warn us!
Hah! FUCK YOU, CLAM!
Destroyed for science is one thing but this one was destroyed by a meth addict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator_%28tree%29
Yeah, I think there was a Mineralism movement a little while ago... Salt and water is all they worked out that they could eat, until they hatched upon the idea that herbivores who murdered plants forfeited their right to life and could therefore be morally killed and eaten (carnovires of course are fellow justice-seekers and so can't be eaten).
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/sci.math/MJQR1qzWt-U/UpPyP4FYcF4J
Do we have to kill everything just to satisfy our curiosity?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There he was, happy as clam...........
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
Leave your girlfriend out of this.
Who knew that clams could get to that age (before Ming was examined)?
Was it the oldest, really? Or are there still older clams, or whatever, on the bottom of the sea?
How many of those older have been killed by predators, fishers, oil drillers or scuba divers? With the big difference that we will _never_ know of those.
Thanks to Ming and Science, we all now _know_. Isn't that much better than a shell sitting on someone's desk? or crushed at the bottom of the sea?
As a vegetarian, how do you feel about eating still living fresh vegetables?
Some things are totally and completely blue and some other things are not even slightly blue at all. But then other things are mostly some other color besides blue but have a few bits and pieces that are blue. And then other things are a slightly bluish shade of some other color.
Life/aliveness is like the color blue. Some things are very alive and other things are not alive at all. But then some things are alive in one way but not in another. Life/aliveness is a multidimensional continuum.
Human-ness is also a multidimensional continuum. Some things are more human in one way. And other things are less human in another way.
At a simple level, one could adopt the priniciple that the more something is similar to living human, the less one should be inclined to (kill and) eat it. But different people are going to draw that line at different places depending on their values - and on how hungry they are.
And why shouldn't we eat people? I would say that a lot of it comes down to respecting the fact that people don't want to be eaten. So, more generally, one could try to avoid eating things that are sophisticated enough to know that they don't want to be eaten.
But clams are an interesting case. They're animals. But they're probably not sophisticated enough to know they don't want to be eaten. And what about a 500 year old clam? The clam itself probably isn't capable of having an opinion. But there are a significant number of humans who would not want to see it killed and eaten.
For me personally, I see a world where the strong exploit the weak - not because they should but simply because they can. And, to the extent that it's convenient, I don't want to be part of that. So not eating meat is one way I can avoid expoiting the weak (or, more specifically, things that are weak but also sophisticated enough to know at some level that they don't want to be exploited).
Since the Chinese formula is rarity + cost = raging boners, I sure hope they ground this guy up into aphrodisiac powder and saved a couple tigers or black rhinos.
Yeah, I think there was a Mineralism movement a little while ago... Salt and water is all they worked out that they could eat, until they hatched upon the idea that herbivores who murdered plants forfeited their right to life and could therefore be morally killed and eaten (carnovires of course are fellow justice-seekers and so can't be eaten).
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/sci.math/MJQR1qzWt-U/UpPyP4FYcF4J
I think some people eat clays, but of course thats formed from the corpses of diatoms so probably not allowed.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmpH19HSLrs
Death to Ming!
What a waste. They should have X-RAY-ed it, or non-destructively checked.
It seems the observation changed the state of the clam. This has to be some sort of break through in applying quantum physics to a larger set of particles.
He survived the cavity search by the TSA. (No Pearl found) The water boarding by the NSA and FBI is what killed him.
Don't think for one second that trees are harmless.
True. I was on a field trip in the army once when a tree dropped a whole branch on this dude. Left a stick poking out the side of his head like an antenna. A medic came over and gave it a flick, then realised it was pretty well stuck. We all thought it went through his skull. No one told the poor guy that of course so he wouldn't freak out. Luckily for him the stick went no further than his skull and didn't do any permanent damage. Threes are savage.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
Going around killing animals pushing their bullshit space fairy agenda.
... just clever guys hacking around, having fun exploring. The sciences are those based on rigorous mathematics applied by those who deeply understand those mathematics (yes, that excludes climatologists).
A lot of the pseudo-sciences also have a weak grasp of technology; do you really have to kill everything you study? Yes, say biologists, medical researchers, etc.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Not quite. It was either alive or dead, and thus was a combination of quantum states. Opening it collapsed the clam's wavefunction. Quantum mechanics colloquially refer to this as a "clam state".
The article is not very good.
The ring is OLD. But the plants from which the ring is formed regulary die and get replaced by new "clones" or scions. So the plants are rather young.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Interesting as your assumption is that richness of experience is only determined by _your_ sensory level of sensory input. But you use the word "likely" a lot. You simply don't know what is going on at the clam's sensory level; you don't know what it feels, and you certainly don't know for certain that it is a purely reactive system operating on an involuntary level. That is simply and completely what you assume from the observations of people ('scientists') who began their investigations with that very assumption i.e. 'biologists' - pseudo scientists who believe all other life-forms are simply automatons, wonderful organic machines.
What you can say is: the organism survived for hundreds of years in its environment until someone killed it to see how long it had been doing so. The value of the observation is dubious. The act illustrates the limited intellectual capacity of the 'scientists' in the field who clearly could not concieve of an alternative methodology.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I suddenly have to think about rule 34 of the internet!
Prometheus was cut down for no good reason by a clueless grad student. He had no justification in cutting down the tree, no proper permit, and it was opposed to standard practice. It was just some goofy kid playing Paul Bunyan. Bad science is bad.
Prometheus was older than Methuselah at the time, but Methuselah is now older than Prometheus was when it was killed. An even older tree was found in 2013.
List of oldest trees
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
If you're going to claim no older organism is known to exist, you probably should at least read the article you linked to. They discovered an older tree last year.
In 2012 a bristlecone pine in California's White Mountains was measured by Tom Harlan to be 5062 years old,[4] making it the oldest known tree in North America and the oldest known individual tree in the world.
Oh, wait, I may have that turned around ...
But there's no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done.
And you make a neat gun.
For the people who are still alive.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
What was the point of examining this individual animal?
It was part of research into climate change over the past 1000 years. The oxygen isotopes in carbonates in clam shells provide information about climate at the time the shell layer was formed. See: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/news/full.php.en?nid=16781&tnid=0
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
How about seven? It's a cannibal.
I was actually assuming the summary was accurate.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Unfortunately, by opening the clam which scientists refer to as 'Ming,' they killed it instantly.
I see parallels with obamacare.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
What's xenu with you?
Yeah dude. Animals have souls, that makes them alive. The lack of a neural network capable of processing self-awareness doesn't make them incapable. It's like how trees feel pain and get scared and want to hug their mommy. The Lorax should speak for the clams, too.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Reminds me of the Oops RadioLab episode where they talk with a guy that killed the oldest thus-far-known tree on Earth (4000+ years old, and yes, that's thousands).
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
...does THAT have to do with the post you replied to? Just needing to vent some frustration this fine evening, are we?
Perhaps you, then, are more in tune with what goes on at a clam's sensory level. That much is obvious.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Remember the line (the accuracy/bonafides of which are still questioned) "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."? It was hailed as symbolizing the absurdity that the war had become. Certainly applies somewhat to some of the absurdities some scientists will go to as well, huh?
Alcaide's Cafe,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131116-oldest-clam-dead-ming-science-ocean-507/
Fixed that for you.