Bisnis.com, JAKARTA – In this world, it turns out that there are several animals that are older than a country, and one of them is Shark Greenland.
The Greenland shark, also known as the gurry or gray shark, belongs to the family Somniosidae (family of sleeper sharks) and their scientific name is Somniosus microcephalus.
This shark prefers cold waters and is commonly found in the North Atlantic off the coasts of New England and Canada as well as Scandinavian waters.
They are also found in the Arctic Ocean. However, they have been found far south of the mouth of the Seine in France.
Additionally, there is evidence that they can live in warmer habitats like the Caribbean, but only at great depths.
Their preferred habitat is continental shelves and islands, intertidal areas and some shallow bays. They can tolerate deep, cold water and have been found at depths of 2200m.
This shark has a short, rounded snout, small eyes, and very small fins for a shark.
They can be creamy gray to blackish brown. This shark is also big! The Greenland shark can weigh up to 2,200 pounds and grow to over 15 feet, making it similar in size to the great white shark.
In an evolutionary sense, sharks are among the oldest living survivors on Earth, having roamed the oceans for over 400 million years.
Remarkably, the deep-sea sharks off the coast of Greenland appear to have lived and swum in Shakespeare’s time over 400 years ago, making them the longest of any known vertebrate. And can live up to 500 years.
Bristlecone pines can live up to 5,000 years. Sea sponges can live for thousands of years. A quahog, a hard-shelled clam, died in 2006 at the age of 507.
Bowhead whales and rough-eyed reef fish can live up to 200 years, and some giant tortoises can live up to two centuries.
The reason why sharks live so long has to do with their way of life. Cold-blooded animals that live in cold environments often have slow metabolic rates, which correlates with longevity.
“The general rule is deep and cold = old, so I think a lot of people expect species like the Greenland shark to be long-lived,” said Chris Lowe, a shark biologist at California State University at Long Beach. smithsonianmagazine.
The key to surviving longer may have something to do with slow growth. Thanks to several tagging studies since the 1950s, Greenland sharks are growing at a snail’s pace, adding 1 centimeter per year.
Yet they live so long that they still reach a length of 400 to 500 centimeters, or 13 to 16 feet, by the time they reach their adult size.
Fishermen once hunted Greenland sharks for their valuable liver oil. A century ago, Greenland landed 32,000 sharks a year.
Iceland and Norway also fish for shark oil, which is also used in industrial lubricants and cosmetics.
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