A new study has revealed that endangered southern right whales can live twice as long as previously believed, reaching up to 150 years old.
Endangered southern right whales can live twice as long as scientists thought, a new study shows. These whales often reach 130 years old, and may even reach up to 150 years old, the study found. Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) are found throughout the Southern Hemisphere but were heavily hunted until the 1960s, when the International Whaling Commission began to ban commercial whaling.
People in the whaling industries considered them the'right' kind of whales to hunt because they move slowly, float when dead and have a high yield of lucrative oil and whalebones. Previously, scientists thought southern right whales had a life expectancy of around 70 years. But these marine mammals are closely related to bowhead whales, and the longest-living mammal ever recorded was an Alaskan bowhead (Balaena mysticetus) estimated to be 211 years old. 'Given everything else we knew about the life history of these species, I hypothesized that they should live longer,' study co-author Greg Breed, a quantitative ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told Live Science. However, estimating the longevity of whales can be difficult. Scientists typically use annular growth layers on teeth, which, like tree rings, are laid down yearly. Many baleen whales, however, do not have such growth layers. And even if they do, tissue wear and tear, and lack of samples could skew the estimation. But a bigger challenge is that, commercial whaling only ended about 60 years ago. So whales older than that would have survived many decades of intense whaling to become centenarians. It's likely few individuals reached their full lifespans
WHALES LIFESPAN ENVIRONMENT STUDY RESEARCH
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