Not so long ago Crystal and I were having a conversation about this very topic. I remember at one time thinking that the giant redwoods in Sequoia National Park were the oldest living things alive today. Seems to me that some of those trees have been around for a couple thousand to a few thousand years now. This means there could be a tree in Central California that was a thousand years old when the three wise men set out to find our little lord Jesus!

Now that is pretty old. Later I heard about a humongous state sized fungus in Montana or Wyoming or probably both. Maybe Nebraska. I don’t really remember but I do remember hearing that it was bigger and older than the giant redwoods in Sequoia.

Now I never really paid attention in school much past 4th grade so the mysteries of life science are not well known to me. I do know that a fungus has it’s very own kingdom and just for fun I am going to quickly take a stab at the five kingdoms of life. Animal, Plant, Fungus, Bacteria, Virus. That feels right, but I am not 100% certain so don’t go betting your life savings on this information.

Now animal and plant I have a basic idea of how they are similar and how they are different. Basic. Fungus, bacteria, and virus are all a bit hard for me to be impressed by anything other than they are weird and can do crazy things. So the problem with me just looking things up is I didn’t ponder the subject long enough and have nothing to attach the data to in my brain. So I just forget it. Apparently fungi can live for a very long time. I only know this because of the crazy old fungus in the Nebraska-Wyoming zone. My impression is that bacteria and viruses have pretty short life cycles. But then I wonder about that fungus? What determines that it is the same living organism that it was thousands of years ago?

I mean we all regenerate cells and basically turn over everything in us that is alive every several years or so, no? So is the fungus simply the same fungus because of the proximity of it’s cells, even though they are not the same cells it had back in olden times? Do we need to have some sort of continuous consciousness to be considered one ancient life form?

So we looked it up and of course I can’t remember much at all about it now except there are quite a few things alive today, mostly under the sea, that live for a lot longer than I was aware of. 300 year old whales and fish, venerable giant squids of exactly what level of ancientness I do not recall but pretty old, and the oldest living organism goes to choral with some form of it being, well Mathusela level geezerly. But for some reason it doesn’t impress me as much as a traditional plant or animal, I believe the choral is actually in the animal kingdom but not as traditional a mammal as say a cow. Anyhow this has been a good think on the subject, once I have it thunk on enough I will come back and comment some facts in the comments below. Keep an eye out!