Bigmouth Buffalo: Can a 127-Year-Old Fish Reveal Secrets to Human Longevity?

The Longest-Living Freshwater Fish Gets Healthier With Age, but Still Struggles to Endure

A healthy looking bigmouth buffalo fish, the world's longest-living freshwater species, gently cradled during research. | Alec Lackmann, PhD

Meet the Bigmouth Buffalo: An Underappreciated Freshwater Marvel

Every spring, for so long nobody knows quite how long, bigmouth buffalo fish move through the shallow reeds in Minnesota’s Rice Lake, gathering to spawn. While this North American native fish can reach sizes up to 50 pounds, they go about their business mostly unnoticed, categorized as “rough fish”, not typically targeted by sport anglers. But the bigmouth buffalo has a much more complex and interesting story than most of us ever imagined. Did you know the bigmouth buffalo is the longest living freshwater fish on the planet, often surviving for over a century? And did you know they hold the potential to provide insights into our own human aging process and mortality?

But running beneath this amazing story of longevity lies an unsettling mystery: even though they have a successful spawn even year, none of their young have survived to adulthood in this Minnesota lake for 50 years.

A bigmouth buffalo cruises serenely under lily pads, showcasing its resilience and natural habitat in shallow waters. | Alec Lackmann, PhD

The Science of Longevity: How Buffalo Fish Defy Aging

Bigmouth buffalo fish, with an endemic range basically following the Mississippi River Basin and its tributaries through the center of Canada and 22 of the United States, have remained mostly overlooked, dismissed as having little ecological or economic importance. Yet, recent studies reveal these resilient fish are incredibly unique because they don’t age like most animals. Alec Lackmann, a fish researcher at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, has discovered buffalo fish as old as 127 years. “The first buffalo I aged was 90 years old,” Lackmann recalls. "I was like 'wow, holy smokes'… It was hard to believe at first.” He and his colleagues also discovered they show no signs of telomere shortening (a region DNA found at the end of a chromosome which limit the number of times a cell can divide), a typical marker of biological aging. Plus, there appears to be a decreased neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio which suggests these unusual animals actually get better at handling bodily stress and see increased immunity as they age.

The Missing Generations: Why Young Buffalo Fish Are Disappearing

Despite their incredible lifespans and their ability to become healthier as they get older, bigmouth buffalo face an uncertain future. What has happened to the past six decades worth of young bigmouth buffalo? Why is it that by summer’s end, each new spring’s juveniles have vanished? The culprit? They don’t have a certain answer yet but it’s possibly predation by pike, which spawn earlier and feast on baby buffalo. This dynamic may have been a factor in driving this unique species to evolve extreme longevity.

Juvenile bigmouth buffalo fish, the focus of research uncovering why these young rarely survive past their first summer. | Alec Lackmann, PhD

Human Impacts: Bowfishing and Misconceptions

Additionally, a complete lack of study and subsequent harvest management regulations may be compounding the problem. Buffalo, which grow large and spend a good deal of time cruising shallow water, become an easy target for bowfishing. It appears that some sportsmen, in a misguided effort to help, may mistake them for invasive species of problematic carp. Piles of discarded buffalo are a common sight, highlighting the species’ vulnerability. Unfortunately, the fact is…“These are native fish that protect ecosystems from invasives,” Lackmann explains, urging better management and public awareness.

The bigmouth buffalo is one of the longest-lived and sporadically recruiting animals, older than elephants, but with a fishing license it continues to remain open to kill as many as one would like with virtually no management oversight, even during their spawning period. This is a recipe for ecological collapse in Minnesota's famed aquatic ecosystems.

Alec Lackmann, PhD

The endemic range of bigmouth buffalo fish spans the Mississippi River Basin and beyond, from Canada to Louisiana. | USGS.gov

Protecting Buffalo Fish: Conservation and Future Research

While conservationists race to uncover the secrets of buffalo fish survival, many questions remain unanswered. What habitats do they need to thrive? Do dams and/or climate change affect their life cycles? And further, is there anything we can learn about the way they age that may benefit our own longevity?

Let’s hope education and awareness can help generate some of the necessary funding to better understand and manage this vital part of our ecosystem. Without action, we risk losing a species uniquely adapted to defy time.

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