The oldest bird alive, an Laysan albatross, has just laid an egg at age 67!

The oldest bird (that we humans know of) in the world is a female Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) named Wisdom. She is currently 67 years old in 2018, and has already baffled the scientific community, since the lifespan of this species was estimated to be 50 years. This puts her well ahead of the lifespan, but that could of course happen without anyone being wrong about the lifespan. As an example, there are many humans that are well over 100 years old, while the lifespan is 79 years.

Anyway, this means that Wisdom is a very old albatross, and she recently did another thing that amazed the scientists; she laid an egg together with her mate, in the same spot she has laid eggs for all her life!

This is Wisdom herself, back in 2011. Image is Public Domain.

Wisdom was first tagged by the ornithologist Chandler Robbins back in 1956, and at that time he estimated her to be at least 5 years old, due to her adult plumage. She could also be a lot older, because determining the age of grown birds can be very difficult, but because of her adult feathers, they are sure she is at least 67 years old.

The Laysan albatrosses

The Laysan albatrosses are large seabirds that are mostly found on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where they are really common. An estimation of their population put their numbers at around 1.6 million birds, but they are still classified as Near Threatened by the IUCN, but recent research has suggested that they may in fact be increasing in population, which would put them back to Least Concern; meaning not threatened.

These birds only weight between 2-4kg, but they still have a wing span of about 2 meters! This makes it a huge bird capable of flying long distances, which is exactly what it does! Wisdom, the 67 year old albatross, has had an estimated flight of 3.2 to 4.8 million kilometers; enough to fly to the moon and back 4-6 times!

A Laysan albatross in-flight. Image by Dick Daniels, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

How could she lay an egg at her age?

We humans are really surprised when we hear that extremely old animals are still able to create offspring, but this is not necessarily all that strange in the animal kingdom. Most species do in fact not have any type of menopause, but instead either stay fertile until they die of age, or run out of eggs at a certain point.

There are only three wild animals that have been known to have menopause (such as the orca), but a lot of species get it when they are held in captivity. This means that more species could potentially have it in the wild, but it is so unlikely that they live to experience it.

Anyway, birds such as the albatrosses do not have menopause, and can lay eggs for as long as they live, which Wisdom is a living example of. The scientists had not really expected her to keep laying eggs at her age, so this is a good example of how many things we don’t know about nature and animals. For all we know this could be a common thing, seeing as most albatrosses are neither aged or ID-tagged, so there could be even older mother birds in the flock.

It’s really cool to think that there are still animals out there that lay eggs and raise offspring even long after their expected life cycle, and I love it when we get surprises like this one that makes us stop and rethink some of our expectations. Thanks for reading!