These Bizarre, Centuries-Old Greenland Sharks May Have a Hidden Longevity Superpower

These Bizarre, Centuries-Old Sharks May Have a Hidden Longevity Superpower

By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron

Greenland sharks are a organic anomaly. The animals can develop to greater than 20 ft lengthy, weigh greater than a ton and may reside for practically 400 years, making the species the longest-living vertebrate on the planet—a truth that might assist unlock secrets and techniques to enhancing longevity.

And now, in a examine published this week in Nature Communications, scientists dial in to one of many Greenland shark’s extra outstanding options: it has functioning eyes and, extra remarkably, maintains its imaginative and prescient effectively into senescence.

Biologists have lengthy believed these sharks to be virtually blind, partly due to their tendency to draw parasites that assault and lodge themselves contained in the sharks’ corneas. But this work challenges that perception, the researchers write, exhibiting that even centuries-old Greenland sharks retain a visible system “well-adapted for life in dim light.”

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“Evolutionarily speaking, you don’t keep the organ that you don’t need,” mentioned Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk, an affiliate professor of physiology and biophysics on the University of California, Irvine, and a co-author of the paper, in a statement. “After watching many videos, I realized this animal is moving its eyeball toward the light.”

Skowronska-Krawczyk and her colleagues analyzed samples taken from sharks that had been greater than a century previous and located no apparent indicators of retinal degeneration, which, she notes, is a “remarkable” discovering, contemplating their superior age.

The researchers say the work gives a leaping off level for future analysis into how the sharks protect their imaginative and prescient over such lengthy durations of time, work that might ultimately inform research of age-related imaginative and prescient loss in people—and the way it could be prevented.

“Not a lot of people are working on sharks, especially shark vision,” mentioned Emily Tom, a Ph.D. scholar on the University of California, Irvine, who can be a co-author of the examine, within the same statement.

“We can learn so much about vision and longevity from long-lived species like the Greenland shark,” Tom mentioned.

Editor’s Note (1/9/26): This story was edited after posting to incorporate a picture of a Greenland shark.

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