The Oldest Creature on Earth
Transcript
00:00This is a 396 years old Greenland shark.
00:04These sharks can live up to 400 years.
00:08This shark was born in 1627.
00:12When Greenland sharks gets old, they often go blind
00:16due to a parasite that latches onto their eye.
00:19The Greenland shark prefers to hunt in dark.
00:22The loss of eyes doesn't affect their ability to hunt.
00:26These sharks have a unique sexual maturity
00:29with females not reaching sexual maturity
00:32until they are around 156 years old.
00:36The groundbreaking discovery of the 396 year old Greenland shark
00:41was made possible through the use of radiocarbon dating,
00:44a technique that analyzes the levels of carbon-14
00:49in the shark's eye lenses.