there’s one thing that every living creature on this planet will face during their lives the end but for some the inevitable conclusion to our time on earth isn’t such a foregone conclusion lifespans aren’t so set in stone and the lucky ones can go on to live almost forever as with everything it’s not necessarily the nice friendly ones either so here are five of the scariest creatures that live forever before we begin make sure to hit the like button subscribe to our Channel and click the notification bill for more amazing videos every day with that being said let’s begin number five Greenland shark Greenland sharks as the name would suggest are mainly found in the freezing waters of the Arctic Ocean and northern Atlantic and are frequently seen around the island of Greenland they’re closely related to southern sleeper sharks and swim to depths of up to 7,200 feet the species is an apex predator in the waters that it inhabits and mainly feeds on fish like other sharks Heron eels cod and flounder they aren’t exactly picky with what they choose to eat though and some specimens have been found to target much larger prey with remnants found in their stomachs of seals horse reindeer and even polar bears they grow to up to 24 feet long and can weigh as much as 3,100 pounds but the adaptations they’ve had to make to survive in such a cold environment means that it takes them an incredibly long time to fully reach maturity they’re one of the slowest swimming sharks with a top speed of 1.6 miles per hour which is half the speed of their main prey studies have shown that they grow as little as half an inch a year and probably only reach sexual maturity once they’re 150 years old specimens that have been tested appear to be much older than 300 years and the current estimate for a Greenland sharks lifespan is around 400 years although it’s quite possible they can live far longer than that this means they have the longest expected life span of any vertebrate species and this knowledge has significant consequences for their conservation if they need to be alive for one and a half centuries before being able to reproduce then it’s important not to catch them any sooner than that it’s not like they provide a decent meal to humans though their lifestyle to take them so deep into Arctic waters means that large concentrations of toxic compounds build up in their flesh to enable them to survive while they are eaten as a delicacy in Iceland the meat has to be carefully treated first to make it fit for human consumption failure to do so can result in effects that appear similar to being extremely drunk now it’s time for the start topic everybody knows turtles and tortoises can live for a seriously long time most famously is Harriet a Galapagos tortoise so old that she was owned by both Steve Irwin and Charles Darwin in her time living from 1830 to 2006 it was obvious that a turtle or tortoise of some kind would end up in this video and we’ve chosen this ugly guy we’ve elected him as a star topic because as the original clip is not in English were not exactly sure what’s being said so we can’t tell what kind of turtle or tortoise it is but based on the look of it it is very old could it maybe even be immortal let us know in the comments if you think there’s a chance remember to comment down below with a hashtag hashtag star topic and we might pin the comment that best explains what’s being shown on this image with that said let’s keep things moving number four red sea urchin sea urchins are discouraged any swimmer or divers who are fortunate enough to tread on one and more worryingly is the fact that one species is one of the longest living animals on the planet the red sea urchin which is found across the shallow regions of the Pacific Ocean is known to be able to live for at least 200 years without any signs of aging whatsoever this means they probably exist for far longer than this but currently we have no way of testing this for certain of course they face dangers from predators but biologically speaking a 100 year old red sea urchin has just as much chance of living for another year as a 10 year old wonders surprisingly the older they get the more apt they are at reproducing and it doesn’t appear to be a time when they become incapable of producing sperm or eggs but they do stop growing once they’ve reached the optimum size for their environments they grow very slowly to about 6 inches across and move across the seabed to eat plants the spines protect them from predators and were once blamed for the decay of ecosystems where they were present in the 1970s they became a valuable commodity when they began to be sold to Japanese customers who regarded some of their organs to be a delicacy this led to the urchins being one of California’s most valuable marine was horses for export by the 90s at a time when it was thought they only lived for up to 15 years the new understanding of their lifespans raises questions about the ethics of harvesting them in this way because it would take a long time for their populations to fully recover but they’re so prolific that they aren’t under threat yet next time you’re in the water and see one of these creatures or a served one in a restaurant just remember it’s probably been alive on this planet for far longer than you have number three naked mole-rat naked mole-rats and native to East Africa and they’re extremely weird creatures they work together in highly efficient social structures are perfectly adapted to spend most of their lives on the ground and are the only mammals that are able to keep their body temperatures wildly different to that of their surrounding environment they generally grow to be up to four inches long and weigh 1.2 ounces but larger specimens have been found and their Queens could be many times that size as they spend most of their lives underground they’re adapted to digging in a similar way to a mole and have rather poor eyesight instead relying on their sense of smell and touch naked mole-rats have no pain receptors in this skin and have unusually low metabolic levels and rates of breathing they’ve been of interest to the medical community for a long time because of their resistance to cancer and the way that they can survive without oxygen for as long as 18 minutes and now recently it’s been discovered that they hardly aged this baby to do with their disease resistance but studies have shown that their risk of death doesn’t increase as they get older something that is the case for every other species of mammal the chance of a human dying for example roughly doubles every eight years after their 30 this is something that’s seen across the animal kingdom but the evidence proves that naked mole rats but that trend once they reach maturity at 6 months old the chances of dying are about one in 10,000 and this even reduces a little as they grow up researchers have suggested that the reason for this lies within the rodents genetics the DNA repair is far more efficient than in other animals and they have a high level of what are known as chaperones which are proteins that are present to ensure that other proteins behave properly this is how they avoid cancers and stave off the signs of aging quite how long a naked mole rat can live for is not known though specimens kept in labs really get beyond 15 years but this is because there dissected or moved on to other facilities the evidence that has so far been collected suggests that they could live for many hundreds of years if their biology continues to remain unchanged as they age or if it does maybe they don’t live much past 30 number 2 poo jet sound geoducks geoducks are one of the strangest looking specimens of clam in the world and are found in the coastal regions of Canada and North America they’re the largest type of burrowing clam with shells that can grow to be eight inches long and siphons that can be up to three point three feet long they can weigh as much as fifteen pounds and are often served in restaurants as a delicacy despite their creepy appearance and apparently delicious taste geoducks can live for an extremely long time following a larval period of almost two months they barely move for a further month and then burrow into the sand to start feeding they reach full size by the time they’re 10 years old but can go on to live for much longer than that the oldest one on record was measured to be 168 years but again this is just an estimate and there’s no reason why they can’t go on to live for much longer they’re relatively inactive live star is thought to be the main driver for why they can live for so many years as once they burrowed into the sand they’ll stay there for good the siphon reaches out and sucks in water which they filter to remove foods such as plankton and other microscopic life-forms amazingly a single geoduck will produce and release around five billion eggs in their lifetime a very small percentage of these are ever fertilized though and along with other threats like predation on the eggs and larvae means that it takes a long time for lost populations to recover one estimate suggests that it can take as long as 39 years to replace stalks that have been taken by fishing but this reason strict quotas are set on how many can be captured each year which further adds a premium on their value with the largest selling for up to 225 dollars number one turritopsis dohrnii while there are many animals that live for an unbelievably long time there’s only one species that is currently considered to be biologically immortal a species of jellyfish called turritopsis dohrnii there are tiny species of jelly that live in oceans across the world and their trick to avoid getting old and dying is simply to revert back to an early stage of their lifecycle their lives begin as a fertilized egg when this hatches a lava cord new life emerges it will swim wherever the ocean current takes it and when it finds itself in opportune position we’ll stick to a solid surface like a rock or a boat it then goes through a transformation to become ippolit which is similar to a coral where it has an opening at one end it functions as a mouth and an appendage at the other that holds it firmly in place it filters the water for nutrients and grows larger even in some cases form in multiple polyps in one place once it’s fed enough it’ll grow a butt which will detach and this is what turns into a juvenile jellyfish at first it’s known as an e4 and then it matures into an adult which is called a Medusa the process is typical for a range of species and at this point it’s capable of reproduction in the case of turritopsis dohrnii though this is far from the end of the story if it faces a threat that would otherwise end its life it’s able to turn itself back into a lump of genetic material similar to how it was when it first emerged from the egg and can attach itself to a surface again to grow as a polyp furthermore there’s no way to tell how often a species has gone through this process so it’s possible there were some that have continued on like this for thousands or millions of years researchers looking into this particular species also believed it to be unlikely that it’s the only one that’s capable of this so we could find out soon that there are far more jellies and similar species that have been living for a lot longer than we had previously thought to be possible which of these creatures would you hate to encounter and what you want to live forever if you could make sure to let us know in a comment section also check out our other cool stuff showing up on the screen right now see you next time
5 Scariest Creatures That Live Longer Than Usual!
