Perhaps because of the cinema we have a different idea of what sharks really are, but it is true that their countenance is, by all accounts, quite terrifying and their way of hunting animals does not help their bad reputation to be forgotten. However, for science they are extremely interesting animals, especially because **they could hold the key to ending aging, or so some scientific teams think.
The longest-lived vertebrate
As a Phys.org article that collects information from the Society For Experimental Biology Annual Conference points out, there is new research on metabolic and muscle activity that may hold the key to fighting aging in humans. However, for this he relies on a really peculiar animal: the Greenland shark, a species of shark that has one of the highest life expectancies known in the animal world.
They are capable of living at least 270 years, while some have reached more than 500 years without problems, being the longest-lived vertebrate animal in global calculation of which there are records. Thus, researchers are working to understand why they are so long-lived.
To do this, enzymatic studies of the muscle tissues of these sharks have been carried out and they have discovered that there was no significant variation in muscle metabolic activity between sharks of different ages. This leads us to think that their metabolism does not decrease over time and this means that they can live so many years.
These animals, which do not reach sexual maturity until after a century and a half, are not really adapted to the polar environment, in fact, their metabolic activity increases with higher temperatures. As their metabolic and reproductive processes are so slow, this makes them easy prey for the fastest environmental changes, something that could put them in check for their survival at a time like the one we are experiencing today.
Thus, this study has two very interesting objectives and aspects. The first is to continue studying enzymes of this species to understand much better how the metabolic activity of this shark works and thus help its conservation in the best possible way in the face of the climatic changes that this species would have to face.
The second aspect is to help better understand human cardiovascular health and try to achieve greater longevity in our species by understanding how others that manage to live for centuries work. In fact, the reasons why mammals live so little and the truth is that it has to do with dinosaurs was also delved into.
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