There is an amazing animal that can live for centuries, trees do it and some simple organisms do too, but there is a large animal with a complex organism that is believed to be able to live more than 500 years and that almost doubles the age of the oldest known land tortoise that died at 255 years old.

This is one of the Greenland sharks, which are the longest-lived vertebrates known, with a life expectancy of at least 270 years, which is what one normally lives, but some can exceed 500 years of life, it was believed that this was due to the cold environment in which they live and the minimal movement they make, that is, it has a very basic biology.

The idea is that the lower the metabolic cost, the longer the lifespan, but there is new research from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom that has revealed that things are not so easy. Researchers have discovered something quite surprising and that is that there are no significant variations in the muscular metabolic activity of sharks at different ages, which suggests that their metabolism remains the same, not decreasing over time.

This is as if a human of 80 or 90 years old continued to have the same metabolism and energy as one of 30 or 40. The results support a new hypothesis and that is that the Greenland shark shows signs of a different type of aging than other animals and this research serves to understand aging also in humans and can provide us with clues to achieve the dream of being able to live more than 100 years while maintaining health and physical activity, for example, similar to that of a human of 30 or 40.