Sunday, June 20, 2010

Are there any other animals that display significant cosmetic signs of aging [post-adult] like Human

I mean like wrinkles and blood vessels showing and saggy boobs or grey hair.



Off the top of my head, i can think about various animals like insects, fish, turtles, bears, cats, but I couldn't look at and an old one and say "man, they are gettin UP there".



follow up question...is there a reason why we suck at aging?



[as in "by contrast"...since we tend to live longer than most animals...cuz they taste so good]



[ps, for the record, i did try looking this up on wikipedia and search engines. Nothing pisses me off more than people on here asking questions they could have answered themselves by typing in two words to google and don't get me started on the people askin opinionated questions like if we think Paris Hilton is gonna come out with a new sex tape.]



Thanks in advance!



DaVe



the-school.org



Are there any other animals that display significant cosmetic signs of aging [post-adult] like Humans?

Mammals definitely show signs of aging, including hairs becoming white/gray and saggy eyes. It is true that the closer they are to us (homo sapiens) and the longer their life expectancy is, the more aging becomes an issue.



There are two major causes for aging at a cellular level: DNA damage, due to exposure to the environment, to UV light and pollution, and the shortening of the end parts of our chromosomes (telomeres) at each cell division. Therefore, individuals exposed to the "insults" of the environment for a long time (like us) are likely to show signs of aging.



In contrast, the average age of medium size insects is only a couple of weeks, a fish only lives a couple of years, and so on: their organisms do not have the chance to "age" as we do.



An exception must be that of the turtles, that can live for many decades, but don't they already look wrinkly from the start?

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