Over the years an enormous amount of both scientific and pseudo-scientific speculation has been aimed at explaining prevailing trends in the lifespan of animals,and how we might apply those lessons to humans. Since clear, observable trends exist with respect to various groups of animals and lifespan, if we can understand the underlying processes behind those trends, we might be able to extend and maximize our own lifespans. The most obvious trend is body size versus lifespan, which is robust and repeatable, yet has some outliers that offer tantalizing grounds for speculation. Figure 1 shows the trend between size and lifespan. The trend lines, both of which have significant scatter, clearly show two trends, with the data broken down to illustrate the difference between flying and non-flying species. The striking difference between species who can and cannot fly will be immediately available to anyone who has ever kept a parrot – some species can reliably outlive their human owners. A number of…
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