Methuselah came to our country from Australia on a steamship in 1938.
She’s still alive and swimming in San Francisco’s Steinhart Aquarium, which estimates that she’s around 94 years old (give or take 9 years, so she could be as old as 103). Her favorite foods are figs, earthworms and prawns, and she enjoys hand feeding and belly rubs.
Like the Shedd’s late Granddad, Methuselah is an Australian lungfish. The species’ name refers to the single lung they can use to gulp and breathe air when oxygen levels in their aquatic environment drop too low. Lungfish can also use their back fins to lift and propel themselves along the ocean floor. They’re closer genetically to cows and humans than salmon and cod, and may be related to the first earthly creatures to move from water to land.
Traces of lungfish have been found in rocks that formed around 400 million years ago. By comparison, the earliest known human fossils are around 300 thousand years old. In other words, lungfish have existed for at least a thousand times as long as humans. No wonder the Steinhart calls Methuselah their “living fossil”! Let’s hope our species proves as resilient as hers.