How long would you say fish live? When I was a kid I always had an aquarium, and I'd say the oldest fish I ever had only lasted a few years. Maybe three? Shortest lived were always carnival goldfish, of course, but I'd be shocked to learn any fish could live longer than ten years.
Then, every once in a while, you learn about a shark in the wild that has lived for hundreds of years. And then there's Methuselah, pictured above. She's an Australian lungfish, and she's probably around 93 years old, which makes her the oldest living aquarium fish. Because her species hasn't evolved in 100 million years, she's considered a "living fossil." Meaning, by studying her we can have some insight into prehistoric life.
For example, the species is generally considered to be the first to have developed a spine in history. And like the name suggests, they can breathe oxygen. One source says it's "the closest living relative to the first fish that crawled out of the sea." It might even be possible that we are descended from them, if that is the case.
I can't help but think about super religious people who still, to this day, are offended at the very idea that we evolved from monkeys. I always think about how they would react when they learned that monkeys possibly evolved from lungfish, and that all creatures (including us) evolved from bacteria.
Methuselah lives at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco and has been there since 1938. Kind of weird to think of it that way. When she arrived the US was in the middle of the worst depression in its history. Nazis were just getting revved up with jerkoff fantasies of world domination. Orson Welles did War of the Worlds that year. The minimum wage was born that year. Hell, that was the year the ballpoint pen was invented. Methuselah is older than the fucking ballpoint pen and the US minimum wage.
But then again, well, you know the unofficial motto of Goodnight, Fuckers. You gonna make me say it?
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