Weekly Top 10

Longest Lived Animals
(Excluding humans)
The ages of animals in the wild are difficult to determine with accuracy because the precise birth and death dates of relatively few long-lived animals have ever been recorded. There are clues, such as annual growth of shells, teeth and-in the case of whales-even ear wax. This Top 10 represents documented maximum ages of anumals attaind by more than one example, although there may well be extreme cases of animals exceeding these life spans.

	Animal	Maximum age (years)
1	Quahog (marine clam)	up to 200
2	Giant tortoise	150
3	Garden tortoise	110
4	Killer whale	90
5	European eel	88
6	Lake sturgeon	82
7	Sea anemone	80
8	Elephant	78
9	Freshwater mussel	75
10	Andean condor	70