Even among wild mammals, females live longer
- Select a language for the TTS:
- UK English Female
- UK English Male
- US English Female
- US English Male
- Australian Female
- Australian Male
- Language selected: (auto detect) - EN
Play all audios:
In all human populations, average lifespans are longer for women than for men. Moreover, nine out of ten supercentenarians — that is, people 110 years old and up — are women. But what about
for other mammals, in the wild? A team led by Jean-François Lemaître, a CNRS researcher at the Biometry and Evolutionary Biology laboratory (CNRS / Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University / VetAgro
Sup), compiled demographic data for 134 populations of 101 mammalian species — from bats to lions, orcas to gorillas — making their study the widest reaching and most precise to date. In
60% of the cases, female mammals live longer than males: 18.6% longer on average (versus only 7.8% longer in humans). Is this because male mortality rates rise faster with age? Not
necessarily, according to Lemaître’s team: for about half of the populations studied, the rise in mortality with age is even more pronounced among female mammals. However, mortality risk is
lower among females at all ages. Reference: “Sex differences in adult lifespan and aging rates of mortality across wild mammals” by Jean-François Lemaître, Victor Ronget, Morgane Tidière,
Dominique Allainé, Vérane Berger, Aurélie Cohas, Fernando Colchero, Dalia A. Conde, Michael Garratt, András Liker, Gabriel A. B. Marais, Alexander Scheuerlein, Tamás Székely and Jean-Michel
Gaillard, 23 March 2020, _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1911999117 NEVER MISS A BREAKTHROUGH: JOIN THE SCITECHDAILY NEWSLETTER.