This Is the World’s Longest-Living Animal

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 11, 7:55AM EDT

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This Is the World’s Longest-Living Animal — © Courtesy of Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Creative

An effort to find the longest-living animal in the world depends to some extent on how the word “animal” is defined. For the purposes of this analysis, the universe has been restricted to mammals.

Based on several studies, the oldest living mammal in the world is the bowhead whale. It is also among the few mammals that live in the sea. The oldest living among the species can live to be almost 200 years old. One study, published by the Telegraph, puts the age of the longest-living bowhead whale at 268 years. The paper also points out that it is difficult for zoologists to set an exact age.
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce recently released its own data on the bowhead whale. The researchers wrote:

According to scientists, this colossal year-round Arctic dweller may live 200-plus years. The bowhead’s lifespan may be the second-longest of all animals, topped only by the 500-year span of a North Atlantic clam called the ocean quahog.

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The bowhead can as long as 65 feet and weigh as much as 100 tons. There are approximately 10,000. The NOAA reports that “the bowhead whale is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.”

One reason that the population of bowhead whales may not continue to shrink is that they can no longer be hunted for oil, meat and baleen. This is due to International Whaling Commission regulations, according to the World Wildlife Federation. However, these whales are still threatened by climate change, pollution and shipping traffic in the Arctic.

Click here to see the 50 longest-living animals in the world.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.