Deep below the ocean floor is an ancient sea monster, blind but extremely longevity

Deep under the cold, cold water of the North Atlantic lies an ancient sea monster – the Greenland shark. This is the planet’s most ‘longevity’ vertebral, the ‘utopian’ record of up to 512 years old.

The Greenland shark is a shark indigenous to the North Atlantic waters around Greenland and Iceland. They have a massive body, the size of a ferocious white shark, 6-7m long, weighing over a ton. As a carnivore. So although the “gentle” one of the “family”, Greenland sharks are still quite dangerous. Usually they eat small fish in cold seas, however they also sometimes catch seals. Despite its giant stature, what attracts ocean scientists more than that is the longevity of this ancient fish. Humans have been looking for ways to prolong their life, and it seems that the Greenland shark is the key to longevity. Biologist Julius Nielsen of the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), after a lengthy study, had to say: “From the beginning, we had expected them to be longevity but did not expect them to live that long. “ Usually sharks are about 30 years old. But in Greenland sharks, this is just the age “know how to crawl” … using the carbon measurement method, the scientists confirmed the average life expectancy of the Greenland shark is over 240 years. Even the oldest specimen is 512 years old – super longevity This means that the sea monster was born from the time Cristoforo Colombo discovered America, and lived until smartphones flooded the planet. Researches suspect that the extremely slow growth, growing only about 1 cm each year under the cold water has helped the animals to live a long life. Until the age of 150, Greenland sharks are fully mature, entering the reproductive age. Currently, scientists are still hoping to be able to find, separate and map genes that are directly related to this species’ longevity. In addition to longevity, large size, Greenland sharks also contain many interesting secrets, for example, they swim very lethargic. Unlike the terrifying speed of the white shark, the average Greenland shark only swims over 1km / h. When hunting prey, it can increase … 2km / h, only half the speed of human walking. Because of this “crawling” speed, scientists believe that it can only catch seals when prey is asleep. There is also an opinion that because it does not need to spend too much energy on moving, plus the cold water of the North Atlantic helps to “preserve fresh” the cells in the body, making Greenland sharks live. to 5 centuries. Adding a perfect factor for longevity is that this sea monster has almost no natural enemies when hiding its giant body forever on the ocean floor. The species that most threatens their lives is humans. This kind of confrontation in reality is completely absent Originally, Greenland sharks live in cold seas, so the body has to secrete a special substance to keep warm, preventing them from freezing. This substance for humans is extremely poisonous, but not so that the animal is ignored … As early as the Viking era, the indigenous people of this cold land discovered that burying sharks for several weeks removed the toxin. … To this day, it is well known that just boil the Greenland shark meat many times, it will achieve the same result. After 3 – 6 months, when the fish goes through a freezing cycle, they dig up and hang the carcass in the wind, for at least 9 months. In the end, just cut off the brown skin, take the white flesh inside, and we have a local specialty called Hákarl However, when trying to eat Hákarl many people say that it “tastes of nightmares” with a scent like urine, rotten cheese. Going back to the deep ocean, the Greenland sea monster also has another strange feature, that is, they are all blind … As a curse, this shark gets attached to the eye by the copepoda parasite, damaging the lens layer In return, Greenland sharks have a sharp sense of smell, can smell prey from extremely far distances. After all, it doesn’t matter much to not seeing anything on the undersea of ​​the sea. Until now, this sea monster is still an interesting research topic for scientists around the world.