Hi, this is Science Friday. I'm Iraflito. Today on the show, eyeballs. As we age, all sorts of things can go awry in our eyes. Our vision gets blurry, cataracts, may make our eyes cloudy, and we're more at risk for diseases like glaucoma. So how do we keep our eyes

healthy for longer? According to new research published in nature communications, one clue may

lie in the eyeballs of, you know, they're going to guess this, the eyeballs of Greenland sharks.

These sharks can survive for more than 400 years. And because they live for so long,

and their eyeballs look glazed over, scientists thought they were basically blind. That is until this

new study found that the shark's eyes are healthier than we originally thought. So, how can

Greenland sharks maintain their healthy eyes for so long?

And can it tell us anything about preserving our own eyesight?

Joining me is the study author, Dr. Dorota Skofranska Kravchik,

Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine,

who studies the mechanisms of aging.

Welcome to Science Friday. Yeah, hello. Thank you mechanisms of aging. Welcome to Science Friday.

Yeah, hello.

Thank you for having me.

Nice to have you.

So what is it about Greenland sharks that caught your eyes, so to speak?

Yes.

There was a study in 2016 in science, so very good journal, talking about how long shark can live.

And they found that these sharks can live, as you said, over 400 years.

But at the same time, they released a lot of movies, and the movies were really cool.

I mean, you know, they were like people swimming along the shark and filming them.

And what I noticed is that the sharks are observing the swimmers.

...