400-year-old Greenland shark ‘longest-living vertebrate’ (2016)

Re:400-year-old Greenland shark ‘longest-living vertebrate’ ... by 46756e on Saturday March 27, 2021 @04:32PM (#26605389)

I’m not educated on this topic at all, but wouldn’t birth rate be more relevant than aging? If this shark lives 400 years but has kids often, it could also go through 900 generations like the mice. Presumably if the environment isn’t favorable then the old members of the species would die off anyway.

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Re:400-year-old Greenland shark ‘longest-living vertebrate’ ... by albertgoeswoof on Saturday March 27, 2021 @05:11PM (#26605679)

The older living sharks would use up resources that the younger ones need to thrive. So it’s way more efficient to get the older population out of the way sooner.

The longevity of the Greenland shark, humans and other long living animals, is in spite of evolutionary pressure to reproduce, raise the next generation and die.

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Re:400-year-old Greenland shark ‘longest-living vertebrate’ ... by jagger27 on Saturday March 27, 2021 @09:13PM (#26607178)

Consider that a litter of sharks born in year 100 would be very closely related to a litter sharks born in year 400. Imagine the same pair of sharks mate over that span of time, those siblings are even closer. To me, evolution is a very deep graph of descendants. The scenario you propose is a very wide and shallow graph.

N.B.: I'm a layman on this topic as well.

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