If you go down to the California Academy of Sciences any time before Sept. 15, you will notice a fair amount of hullaballoo concerning Claude the albino alligator ’s imminent 30th birthday. That’s nice, but there’s one cool creature at Cal Academy whose age deserves to be celebrated every day. It’s Methuselah: the museum’s centenarian lungfish, and most demanding diva.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “But it’s a fish.” Or more specifically: “But it’s a brown fish.” And also: “When are the African penguins having birthdays though?”

But Methuselah is no ordinary lungfish. She’s a cranky old broad who knows what she wants and how to get it. We know this because we talked to her primary caretaker, biologist Laura McMillan, who has been at the mercy of Methuselah’s mood swings for

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