Why do some animals live much shorter lifespans than humans and others much longer? What determines the lifespan on an animal?
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Although not a hard rule lifespans are largely determined by metabolism. All mammals have roughly the same number of heartbeats and breaths in their lifetime. Short lived animals have a very high metabolism and larger animals tend to have a lower metabolism. Humans sort of mess up this calculation because we have a lot of medicine, pretty good diets, and other preventative measures that make us have a longer lifespan that would otherwise happen in the wild.
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