Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
Those words from Shakespeare’s Tempest were first spoken some time in the early 1610s – at a time when, full fathom five or so below the seas off Iceland, a clam that would one day be called Ming was reaching its teenage years. Dredged up last year and since studied at the University of Bangor, Wales, this quahog clam – named after the dynasty ruling China in its youth – seems to be the oldest animal ever to have had its lifespan measured, having enjoyed a long enough span to listen to some 3.5 million hourly knells.
By counting its growth lines researchers put Ming’s age at between 405 and 410 years (press release). This dwarfs the previous oldest animal record. The Guinness Book of Records has a 220 year old quahog specimen listed and a 374 year old quahog has also been discovered in an Icelandic museum. Mere whippersnappers next to Ming, though all pale into insignificance next to some trees, which have clocked up ten times his age.
As the research was funded by charity Help the Aged we are of course obliged to speculate that Ming may even provide insights into human aging. “What’s intriguing the Bangor group is how these animals have actually managed, in effect, to escape senescence,” researcher Chris Richardson told the BBC. “One of the reasons we think is that the animals have got some difference in cell turnover rates that we would associate with much shorter-lived animals.”
The Telegraph has dedicated an opinion piece to the memory of Ming while the Times’s leader on the subject is rather derogatory of the clam’s taste for the quiet life. We are left to mourn an animal that may have lived happily for many more years, had it not been cruelly dredged from its happy home. As the eternally sarcastic Register remarks, “We can conclude from this that to live a long and healthy life, it would be advisable for a person to avoid being sliced in two by someone intent on counting one’s rings.”
Image: Ming / Bangor University