Which Animal Has The Longest Life Span?
And so far every answer has been incorrect. The longest lived animals are sponges, which are effectively immortal. The oldest known sponges are over 1, 000 years old. Sponges are such simple animals that they do not age, they never grow old and because they can regenerate all body parts they are very difficult to kill.
The giant tortoise lives the longest, about 177 years in captivity, and the gastrotrich (a minute aquatic animal) lives the shortest — three days. This question brings up intriguing matters, such as: what is an animal, can we compare all animals together, when does life begin and end, what can we actually observe? Here are some answers: Animals are living things that aren’t plants. Animal cells lack cellulose walls and chlorophyll. Animals can’t photosynthesize to eat; they need more complex food, like proteins. They move around when they want to and respond quickly if poked or otherwise stimulated. Protozoans are animals, but can we include such animals in our search for extreme life spans? No, because protozoans reproduce by dividing a single parent. They are not individuals and essentially live forever, or as long as the species survives. We can’t compare colonies or genetically identical organisms with distinct individuals that result from a sexual reproduction. That’s comparing ap
longest animal life span, reptile, organic, mammal, plant, ocean, bird,… tortoise 177 years, reptile, http://www.wonderquest.com/LifeSpan-MaxM… http://animal.discovery.com/guides/repti… ocean quahog ~200yrs, http://www.virginiaseafood.org/consumers… rockfish~ 200 yrs http://www.sebastes.org/evol.html coelacanth ~old, but only 60yrs http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/an… ..
On land: Tortoises (According to the Guinness Book Of World Records, a Madagascar radiated tortoise called Tui Malila presented to the Tongan royal family by Captain James Cook in the late 1700s, was either 188 or 192 when it died in 1965.) In sea: Red sea urchin, since I’m not sure if sponge is considered as an animal. (The red sea urchin found in the shallow waters of the Pacific Ocean is one of the Earth’s longest-living animals.) Well, I’m not so sure about all of it, but some sponges can also live up till quite a long time. Some of them just live for a year, and the next they are gone.
