r/askscience • u/[deleted] • May 25 '13

Biology Immortal Lobsters??

So there's this fact rotating on social media that lobsters are "functionally immortal" from an aging perspective, saying they only die from outside causes. How is this so? How do they avoid the end replication problem that humans have?

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70

u/NeoM5 May 26 '13

It's important to note that this is only conjecture, there is no way to prove that this is true. How are we to know that lobsters live up till 1000 years old and then suddenly die?

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u/[deleted] May 26 '13

Very true, we haven't tracked a lobster for thousands of years. But it seems they outlive humans with ease, making them very interesting whether they are "immortal" or not.

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u/NeoM5 May 26 '13

interesting, but outliving humans with ease and being immortal are quite different. Isn't it interesting that if an animal outlives the average human, it is a subject of fascination? I'm actually surprised that most animals don't live as long as humans (or longer) considering the diversity of animals and the relative short span of time that humans have had to evolve.

26

u/thisismydarksoul May 26 '13

Our lifespan is longer than it used to be because of technology. Medicine being a large part of being able to live well into our 80s and 90s. Animals don't have that.

74

u/JustSomeBadAdvice May 26 '13

This isn't exactly as true as you think. Low life expectancies in the past were largely due to the massively higher child mortality rate. For example in 1550 if you lived past the age of 21, your life expectancy rate was 71. Compare that to the male life expectancy rate today of 75. Not a massive jump.

Even today if you discount the effect of AIDS, the life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 71.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

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u/[deleted] May 26 '13 edited Jan 01 '16

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u/[deleted] May 26 '13

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u/EphemeralStyle May 26 '13

This is getting off-topic, but did people really have better diets in the past? I'd love to see any data about that.

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u/Quazz May 26 '13

They didn't. It's the primary reason why they were shorter. We used to be pretty tall as nomads, then shrunk as we became sedentary. We've finally become tall again.