DR BEACHCOMBING: A very old carp

This is an uncommonly good fish story. It appears in a curious book entitled: Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, or, The sage’s triumph over old age and the grave. If you want to achieve immortality you should probably give said book a read. In any case let’s move on to a centuries-old carp.

It is not only the Inhabitants of the Land and Air that attain to such vast Ages, such as dwell in the Waters seem to have yet a larger Share of Life, of which I will give one well attested Instance out of many. In the Year 1497, in a Fishpond in Suabia, near Huilprin in Germany, they took a Carp of a prodigious size, which had in his Ear, a Ring of Copper, with these Words in Latin. I am the first Fish that was put into this Pond by the Hands of Frederick II, Governor of the World, the 5 October, 1230. This Carp appeared to have lived 259 years, and probably might have lived much longer, had he not been taken out [95].

Beach does not know whether medieval fish were tagged. He does not know whether Frederick II had a fish pond. He does not know whether in 1497 an abnormally large fish was caught in Swabia. He does know that there is good evidence for decade-old carp and more difficult but not impossible claims that carp can make it to a hundred. He also knows that there are a series of stories about animals being discovered with messages on them proving their great age: there are several, for example, involving tortoises.

Read on...