We often say that "life lies in motion", but some animals in nature tell us that there seems to be something wrong with this statement, because the rabbit as a whole is bouncing around, and the average life expectancy is only 5-12 years old, and the turtle that "races" with it is slow all day long, and even a hibernation can kill half a year, but it is the longest-lived animal among vertebrates, why is this? Or what code does the turtle have in mind to make itself live longer? Let's try to find out.
Turtle usually refers to all the animals under the order of turtles and turtles, including 341 different species of turtles, turtles, tortoises, etc., although they are quite different, but tortoise shells are their common characteristics, different turtles have a large difference in lifespan, the old man often said "millennium king."
8. "10,000-year-old turtle" is used to describe the longevity of turtles and turtles, and this sentence shows that in the eyes of the ancients, turtles are to live longer than turtles, so is this really the case? Let's take a lookThe longest-lived turtles and turtles
The longest-lived soft-shelled turtle
Turtle is the general name of all animals under the turtle family, our more common turtle is the Chinese soft-shelled turtle, compared with the turtle with obvious lines of the hard shell, its shell is softer, and there is an obvious skirt. However, the lifespan of the Chinese soft-shelled turtle can only be regarded as decent, with an average of only 30-60 years old, and more than 60 years old is already considered a long life.
However, another kind of turtle under the soft-shelled turtle family, which is also the largest existing soft-shelled turtle, is different, it can be described as the "old birthday star" under the turtle order. Turtle turtle is the most endangered species in the whole order of turtle turtle, there are only 4 left in the world, three of which are in Vietnam and one in China.
Turtle. Originally, there were three turtles in China, but in 2007, a turtle named "Fang Fang" died in China, and in 2019, another female in China died unexpectedly during artificial insemination, so there was only one left.
According to the research of scientists, among the known turtles, Fang Fang is the longest-lived, it lived from the reign of Mingshenzong of the Wanli Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty to 2007, with a lifespan of more than 400 years.
Although turtles live long-lived, there are too few remaining in the world, the success rate of artificial insemination is low, and the high mortality rate also makes it difficult for them to reproduce, and if no better way is found, they are the most likely species to become extinct, and now they are critically endangered, and they are only one step away from extinction.
The longest-lived turtle
Since the longest-lived turtles are more than 400 years old, according to the "thousand-year-old king 80,000-year-old turtle", the turtle must not easily break the thousand-year-old ah, but in fact there is no thousand-year-old turtle, among the existing turtles, the longest average life span is tortoises, especially tortoises, they are not only the longevity of tortoises, but also the body size.
Among the tortoises, the more well-known is the "lonely George", it is a Galapagos tortoise, the reason why it is lonely is because the Galapagos tortoise has multiple subspecies, just like the leopard has 9 subspecies such as the North China leopard, the Indian leopard, and the African leopard, and George is an individual of the subspecies of Pinta Island, and it is the last individual, it lived from 1910 to 2012, at the age of 102.
Lonely George.
As George slowly closed his eyes, the Galapagos tortoise Pinta Island subspecies completely disappeared from the earth, however, the lonely George was not the longest-lived tortoise, it was not even as long-lived as the Galapagos tortoise named "Harry" that Darwin captured on the Galapagos Islands, this tortoise was captured by Darwin in 1835, when the tortoise was only 4 years old, it lived until 2006, a total of 175 years old, becoming the longest-lived Galapagos tortoise.
However, it was also in the year of Harry's death that an Aldabra tortoise living in the Kolkata Zoo in India also came to the end of its life, and the cause of its death was heart failure, and the tortoise named Advita was obtained in 1750**, and until his death in 2006, it lived a total of 256 years, becoming the longest-lived tortoise known.
Therefore, the statement of the thousand-year-old turtle is not only exaggerated, but also wrong, because the longest-lived turtle is the turtle, and its longest lifespan can reach more than 400 years, and with this achievement, it has also become the longest-lived vertebrate, and the only one that can compete with it is the Greenland sleeping shark.
The longevity of turtles has always been the subject of exploration and research in the scientific community, because it has the potential to make humans live longer, and according to years of research by scientists, the secret of turtle longevity has been slowly revealed.
First of all, one of the secrets of turtle longevity is temperature change。Turtles are ectotherms, they can't regulate their body temperature, they can only change with the change of the environment, but it is this characteristic that makes turtles do not need to carry out higher intensity metabolism at any time to maintain a stable body temperature, at the same time, turtles are always slow, and their metabolism is relatively slow.
As early as 1908, the German physiologist Max Rubner analyzed the relationship between metabolism and lifespan of hundreds of animals and came to a conclusion: the slower the metabolic rate of most animals, the longer their lifespan, this theory is called "rate of living theory".
Turtles are warmer and move slowly, making their metabolic rate much slower than other animals of similar size, which is a secret to their longevity.
Secondly, turtle longevity is related to the number of reproductive generations of their cells. As early as the mid-19th century, the German pathologist Rudolf Fürschau and the French anatomist Matthias Duval discovered a special kind of cell when studying animal cells, which is directly related to cell repair in animals, and scientists named it fibroblasts.
Through the analysis of fibroblasts in different animals, researchers found that the fibroblasts of giant tortoises have the most generations of reproduction in vertebrates, and the replacement rate is the slowest, and the slow replacement rate means that the cycle of cell replacement is longer, and the more reproductive generations mean that it can repair more cells in the body, through further research, scientists found that the fibroblast reproduction generations of turtles have reached a terrifying 120-150 generations, while the average human is only 50 generations, This is the reason why tortoises live at least 2 times or even more than humans by 2 or even 3 times longer.
Although turtles uphold the survival rule of not moving, their metabolic rate is incomparable to most animals (slow), and a slower metabolic rate means that the aging of cells is slower, which makes their cell replacement rate also decrease, coupled with a large number of fibroblast reproduction generations, making turtles a birthday star among vertebrates.
In other words, if science develops to the point where it can slow down the rate of cell turnover and increase the number of reproductive generations of fibroblasts, humans can live to be hundreds of years old, but they can't do it yet. **10,000 Fans Incentive Plan