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#senescence

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Why Some #Animals Live for Only Days and Others Live for Thousands of Years
#Scientists are studying why some species live so much longer than others.
Some species of #turtles, #fishes and #salamanders, for instance, don’t show any signs of degeneration or #senescence as they grow older. If they didn’t die of predation, accidents or infectious disease, they could live extremely long lives, Magalhães says.
scientificamerican.com/article

Scientific American · Why Some Animals Live for Only Days and Others Live for Thousands of YearsBy Clara Moskowitz

Study of tool use by elderly #chimpanzees in Bossou, Guinea. Looking at archive footage of wild chimpanzees engaging in one of their most complex forms of tool use - the cracking of hard-shelled nuts with hammers and anvil stones. Extent of age-related change in tool engagement and efficiency was very variable.

#senescence #primates #greatapes #lifehistory

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre

elifesciences.orgOld age variably impacts chimpanzee engagement and efficiency in stone tool use

A quotation from Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Let mine not be the saddest fate of all,
   To live beyond my greater self; to see
   My faculties decaying, as the tree
Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall.
   Let me hear rather the imperious call,
   Which all men dread, in my glad morning time,
And follow death ere I have reached my prime,
Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life’s gall.
The lightning’s stroke or the fierce tempest blast
   Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day
Is kinder than the calm that lets it last,
   Unhappy witness of its own decay.
   May no man ever look on me and say,
“She lives, but all her usefulness is past.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) American author, poet, temperance advocate, spiritualist
Poem (1882), “Uselessness,” Maurine and Other Poems (1882 ed.)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/wilcox-ella-wheeler/…