Some cold-blooded animals have famously long life spans—at 190 years old, Jonathan the Seychelles giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) holds the current record for oldest land animal—yet compared to mammals and birds, there has been relatively little research into how these creatures age.
Now, two research papers published today (June 23) in Science delve into how cold-blooded creatures grow old, both in the wild and in captivity. Together, the two studies found highly variable rates of aging among these animals, with some species aging very quickly and others—especially turtles and tortoises—aging at almost imperceptibly slow rates.
“It’s really important to study aging from a lot of different perspectives,” says Peter Sudmant, an assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in either of the studies. “A lot of what we’ve learned about aging comes from comparing and contrasting different species.”
One study examined aging ...
