What Earth's longest-lived animals can teach us about aging better

"We can make mice live 30 percent longer. It doesn't really work for anything greater than that - but if you look at the wild kingdom, you can find 100-fold differences within mammals that are similar to us. Nature has had several billion years to experiment with ways of making animals resist aging better."

"Scientists like Gorbunova scour the natural world for exceptionally long-lived outliers, from beavers to bats to sharks, to learn more about how they stay cancer-free, resist infections or retain their eyesight for centuries. They also look for consistency - specific genes, proteins or enzymes that exist in a variety of animals and might be a basic component of long life."

"If we look at animals that do things better than we do, maybe we could get some better clues about how to keep ourselves healthy longer. Nature has had several billion years to experiment with ways of making animals resist aging better."

Certain animals demonstrate extraordinary lifespans, including Greenland sharks living over 500 years and naked mole rats reaching their 30s. While human centenarians fascinate researchers, the animal kingdom exhibits vastly greater age variations—up to 100-fold differences among similar mammals. Longevity researchers have extended lab mouse lifespans by 30 percent, but natural species offer more dramatic examples. Scientists systematically study long-lived outliers like beavers, bats, and sharks to identify how they resist cancer, infections, and age-related decline. By searching for consistent genetic, protein, and enzymatic patterns across diverse long-lived species, researchers aim to discover fundamental aging-resistance mechanisms applicable to human health and lifespan extension.

Read at The Washington Post