How old do fish get?

Some fish live to an incredibly old age. Others race through life in just a few weeks. However, for many species, we know very little about how old they can actually get. This also applies to aquarium fish.

What do Methuselah and Granddad have in common? You guessed it: both are very old. And not just in terms of years, but also from an evolutionary perspective. Methuselah turned 87 this year and has been living in an aquarium in San Francisco since 1938. Granddad, on the other hand, was estimated to be 109 years old when he died in 2017, having spent 84 of those years in an aquarium in Chicago. Both of these old-timers are Australian lungfish. Lungfish are living fossils, as they have been around for over 400 million years. And they are the closest living relatives of land vertebrates.