I read an explanation about turtles having longer lifespans compared to humans because they have a slower metabolism. If it’s true, shouldn’t sloths also have longer lifespans? According to my searches, they only live around 20-30 years in the wild and 40-50 years in captivity, which is still shorter compared to humans. Why is that?
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Sloths are mammals and their metabolism can’t really be compared to that of reptiles as being either fast or slow.
Body mass tends to be a better predictor of lifespan than metabolic rate, even though there’s a decent correlation between body mass and metabolic rate as well. And yet while the larger the animal, the longer it tends to live, but even that isn’t neatly linear. Feral domestic cats live about the same lifespan as their much larger lion cousins.
In summary, there are a lot of factors, particularly evolutionary pressures involving temperatures, environments, reproductive rates, predation, etc. that result in a lot of exceptions to the size/metabolic rate vs. lifespan rule.
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