A 74-year-old Laysan albatross named Wisdom has successfully bred, becoming the world's oldest known breeding wild bird. This remarkable feat highlights the resilience of birds despite facing threats like avian influenza.
Motherhood is entirely possible at the age 74—for some birds at least. A Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) named Wisdom recently became the world’s oldest known breeding wild bird. According to the Pacific Region of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, she returned to the Midway Atoll–or Kuaihelani in Hawaiian–in December 2024 and began to interact with a new male partner. Wildlife officials then spotted what could be Wiscom’s 60th egg.
The egg should hatch sometime in February and is a good sign for birds that have been hit hard by highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) or bird flu. “Especially in the landscape of highly pathogenic avian influenza, it's exciting to have a species that is still propagating this long when they’re facing some pretty incredible odds,” Jennifer M. Mullinax, a research ecologist from the University of Maryland tells Popular Science. Wisdom is also not alone in her longer reproductive window, which is shared by other species of wild birds. Humans are really more of the outliers as far as living longer than we can successfully reproduce, and there are several species that have a much longer runway for having their young. Who reproduces for 1,000 years? Deep-sea sponges They may look like an alien organism or some kind of giant plant, but sea sponges are part of the animal kingdom. While scientists are still learning more about their life spans, these deep-sea dwelling creatures can live incredibly long. A view of different species (sponges, crinoids, etc.) representing a deep ecosystem at 110m depth on September 24, 2019 off the French Guyana. CREDIT: Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images. “They're colonial animals and some sponges are thought to have a lifespan as a colonial unit, in the order of thousands of years,” Anne Clark, an evolutionary biologist and behavioral psychologist from Binghamton University in New York, tells Popular Scienc
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