5 ms·

Smaller creatures live longer. Citation needed. Elephants live for 60 years. Mice live for 3. Life expectancy is clearly not a function of size alone, so you p

Smaller creatures live longer. Citation needed. Elephants live for 60 years. Mice live for 3. Life expectancy is clearly not a function of size alone, so you probably need to back up that claim that they lived longer because they were stunted.

trevor-e 9y ago
I'm pretty sure OP was referring to smaller creatures of the same species.
- jamesrom 9y ago
  Again, OP is claiming that the property of 'smallness' is a causative factor to increased life expectancy. This is a way more dubious claim than calories being a causative factor. For example, birds are the opposite: larger birds generally live longer than smaller birds. Actually, the more I think about it, it's the same with lizards. And primates and most mammals. And pretty much every species besides a small subset of domestic canines that have undergone artificial selection in the past millennia.
  - pacaro 9y ago
    Yeah, I suspect that with dogs that overbreeding is a bigger issue. We have a Bernese Mountain Dog, they don't have a good health profile, for example all the "large chested breeds" are at risk of "bloat" or gastric torsion. If this isn't caught quickly then it's fatal (blood supply to the stomach is interrupted). This is something that happens through artificial selection for size, i suspect that it is rare in wolves.
  - eco 9y ago
    Many reptiles are indeterminate growers (meaning they'll keep growing as long as long as they are alive) so of course the largest ones live the longest. Birds and mammals, however, pretty much all have determinate growth as far as I know.
  - vacri 9y ago
    Similarly, humans are getting more long-lived and taller at the same time.
- 13of40 9y ago
  The question is whether smaller humans live longer, and we should have plenty of data on that. Here's a study published in the Western Journal of Medicine that cites "FINDINGS SUGGESTING THAT SHORT STATURE IS HEALTHIER": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/ e.g. "The researchers, Willcox etal, did not attribute this superior health to genetics because when younger Okinawans migrate to mainland Japan, Hawaii, or the United States, they soon acquire the chronic diseases of the host population. The Okinawans are shorter and weigh less than mainland Japanese, and men aged 87 to 104 years average 145.4 cm (4ft 9 in) and 42.8 kg (94lb)."

trevor-e 9y ago

I'm pretty sure OP was referring to smaller creatures of the same species.

jamesrom 9y ago
Again, OP is claiming that the property of 'smallness' is a causative factor to increased life expectancy. This is a way more dubious claim than calories being a causative factor. For example, birds are the opposite: larger birds generally live longer than smaller birds. Actually, the more I think about it, it's the same with lizards. And primates and most mammals. And pretty much every species besides a small subset of domestic canines that have undergone artificial selection in the past millennia.
- pacaro 9y ago
  Yeah, I suspect that with dogs that overbreeding is a bigger issue. We have a Bernese Mountain Dog, they don't have a good health profile, for example all the "large chested breeds" are at risk of "bloat" or gastric torsion. If this isn't caught quickly then it's fatal (blood supply to the stomach is interrupted). This is something that happens through artificial selection for size, i suspect that it is rare in wolves.
- eco 9y ago
  Many reptiles are indeterminate growers (meaning they'll keep growing as long as long as they are alive) so of course the largest ones live the longest. Birds and mammals, however, pretty much all have determinate growth as far as I know.
- vacri 9y ago
  Similarly, humans are getting more long-lived and taller at the same time.
13of40 9y ago
The question is whether smaller humans live longer, and we should have plenty of data on that. Here's a study published in the Western Journal of Medicine that cites "FINDINGS SUGGESTING THAT SHORT STATURE IS HEALTHIER": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/ e.g. "The researchers, Willcox etal, did not attribute this superior health to genetics because when younger Okinawans migrate to mainland Japan, Hawaii, or the United States, they soon acquire the chronic diseases of the host population. The Okinawans are shorter and weigh less than mainland Japanese, and men aged 87 to 104 years average 145.4 cm (4ft 9 in) and 42.8 kg (94lb)."