What Turtles Can Teach Humans About the Science of Slow Aging

There are three ways to die. Humans have gotten better at avoiding the first two, but as we get older, we're going to get senile. The hydra, a tiny freshwater creature that some scientists consider potentially immortality, seems to do better than others. A naked mole rat turned 39 last year and made headlines. Jonathan, the world's oldest living land animal, celebrated what was thought to be his 190th birthday a few months ago.

The question is if it is possible to escape aging.

There was a study published in Science. If you are a Turtle. A team of four scientists analyzed 52 turtle species and found that the majority of them were slow and in some cases negligible in their senescence. Turtles can still die from injury or illness, even if they are immortality. Their risk of death doesn't change with age. Fernando Colchero says that they confirmed something that was suspected but never proved.

The aging rate is a measure of how much the risk of death increases with age. It is thought that the risk grows with age. The rate was almost flat for most of the turtle species.

The environment the animals lived in is a factor. When conditions improve, turtles and tortoises can change their aging rates dramatically, thanks to factors like protection from predators, a controlled climate, and unlimited access to food and shelter. Previous work used primate data that reported increases in longevity due to better living conditions but no reduction in mortality due to slowed aging.

What's going on? Evolutionary theories suggest that energy trade-off is the cause of senescence. Colchero says that most mammals and birds stop growing once they reach sexual maturity. With insufficient upkeep, bodies become more vulnerable to chronic age related conditions, as well as injuries or infections. Many lizards don't. He says that they seem to be efficient at repairing damages and working well.

According to Rita da Silva, an animal with this quality is a good candidate for evading senescence. To prove it, the researchers collected demographic information from the Zoological Information Management System, a database of records from zoos. They only focused on turtles living in fresh water or on land when selecting species that had data.