What living thing lives the longest? and for how long?

Answer 1

Trees are the longest living things on the planet. Giant Redwoods of California are well over 500 years old.

Answer 2

Oldest living organism? Methuselah tree or the Bristlecone Pine either way, it's definitely a tree.

Oldestspoken language: With varying degrees of certainty, several sources date the Basque language to the 2nd millennium B.C. It might be the only suvivor of the language spoken by paleolitic hunter-gatherers. All are agreed it predates Latin or Celtic.

Longest living mammals: Us humans live longest, with elephants a close second

Oldest living culture? There is substantial evidence tracing Australian Aboriginal culture back some 100,000 years, which would make it the oldest living culture in the world.

Oldest living person: The Guinness Book of records is only accurate up to the day it is ready for printing. The oldest woman recorded at the age of 115 has since died. Mmakgomo Sekhukhune is a granny who is probably the oldest living person in the world. Her ID shows her age to be 123, probably making her the oldest in the world. She has been alive since before the Boer War, and lived to see the huge technological changes of the modern world come about.

Longest living invertebrate? A new study has concluded that the red sea urchin which is a small spiny invertebrate living in shallow coastal waters, is possibly the longest living animal on Earth: it can live to be 100 years old, and some may reach 200 years or more in good health with few signs of age. Of course it can die from attacks by predators, specific diseases or through being harvested by fishermen.

Longest living organism? This may be the 'King Clone', a Creosote plant living in West California, estimated to be 11,600 years old.

Some scientists in the remote southwest corner of Tasmania have also found what they claim is a 40,000-year-old shrub, thereby making it possibly the oldest living organism in the world. The plant, known as King's Holly, is the only known living specimen of the species Lomatia tasmania. It is not only older than the last ice age but also incredibly big.

Largest invertebrate is the most famous squid of all: the giant squid; It sometimes measures over 60 feet in length and weighs in at two tons. Its two long tentacles may stretch to 40 feet. Each arm contains movable suckers circumscribed by toothed rings that dig into prey. Its highly developed eyes, up to 15 inches in diameter, are also the largest in the world.

Answer 3

You'd have to define your organism first... the longest lived things don't have parts that have been continuously alive for the whole period!

Bristlecone pine: thousands of years -- but, new parts grow while old parts die.
"King Clone" creosote bush - more than ten thousand years -- but, all of the original material has long since rotted away, and what you have now is what appears to be a ring of new bushes.
Quaking Aspen forest -- maybe a million years old. Maybe not. But again, it's just a group of clones, with no present part of it being really really old.

Answer 4

The longest living mammals are NOT humans contrary to popular opinion. Bowhead Whales commonly live to well over 200 years old and are capable of breeding for over 100 years. Blue whales also have a longer life span than humans, with average life expectancy of 90-100 years.

Answer 5

Some trees can live for thousands of years, the Sequoia and the Redwood (which was already mentioned) I know of for sure. But I suspect few people know how long those things live, because the only way to tell that I know of is to cut down the tree and count the rings inside, which of course kills the tree and messes up the results.

Answer 6

The lifespan of the giant tortoise is about 150 years. The rougheye rockfish can live up to 205 years.

Answer 7

Giant tortoise=150+ years!

Answer 8

There are several possible answers. Some of these sites say it's the bristlecone pine, some say the cresote bush, some say it's a form of bacteria:

Creosote bush: (approx. 11,000 yrs. old)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20020130-1443-wst-ancientshrub.html
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0601.htm#oldest

Bristlecone pine (3000-5000 yrs. old)
http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392118

Bacteria (some are 40 million yrs. old)
http://www.extremescience.com/OldestLivingThing.htm

Answer 9

a bristlecone pine was (maybe still is) over 2000 years old

Answer 10

Turtle over a hundred years I think.