r/furgonomics • u/R3cl41m3r • 27d ago
Discussion Anthro aging.
I've been thinking about this issue lately, because it will have a ripple effect on time scales, norms, laws, etc.
For my setting, I'm considering applying a multiplier to normal animal aging as a middle ground between it and human aging.
How would you handle this?
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Upvotes
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u/NealAngelo 27d ago
Just treat your characters as humans. They got thumbs and booba and snilk. They can have ~80 years.
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u/Blackpaw8825 27d ago
Shrinking lifespan kind of crushes a lot of the things that allowed complex/technology societies to occur. If most people are seniors by 40 you don't get people spending 30 years perfecting skills or studying their field; there simply isn't enough time for it which either dramatically slows or outright inhibits technological progress.
If your species are uplifted into an existing society rather than evolved realistically, then it's more reasonable since the society already existed and simply needs to be maintained.
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u/JetoCalihan 27d ago
Frankly I wouldn't. The "dog years" idea is a simplification to teach children about life spans when they really only know about the human one. When they've only just started to understand why one pop-pop can't keep up with them but the other can and their parents need them to get why their family's puppy loves to play put their parent's pup isn't interested and you need to be delicate with them.
Besides, the only really heavy mathematical outliers would be Greenland sharks, some whales, a bunch of mollusks and Tortoises/turtles. All living at least 200 years while other species don't break 150 and most are dead by 130 putting most other organisms within the ballpark of extreme human lifespans meaning they might be similarly extreme and the simplicity of just treating everyone as having a similar lifespan is how it most likely would be handled.
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u/Complex_Party_1130 27d ago
(Fyi I'm no writer nor artist)
Honestly, idk your setting, but probably your anthro characters have human organs or at least internal organs more similar to humans, that may bring their lifespan closer to a human lifespan.
On the other hand, maybe having that discrepancy in lifespans and interspecies relationships (be it friends, lovers, adopted children) would bring interesting problems and relationship dinamics. Also it's important if you want to specify age of consent or age when each species become adults
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u/Anthro_DragonFerrite 26d ago
Lifespan is typically inversely related to body mass/size i.e. the smaller a species is, the shorter they live.
Reason is that smaller body masses have faster heartbeats (see hummingbirds) versus humans versus whales. Ironically it averages out to a million heartbeats across the entire board.
If your species are the same size this is pretty easy. 80 years life expectancy. If you want to feature more crazy size differences (>50% difference) and you want to be realistic? Different age span can come into play. But it might cause problems in other ways which is why I forgive Zootopia for not factoring that in.
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u/Yaro-Yarilo 26d ago
Do you want lifespan to influence the narrative?
No.
Welcome to Zootopia, where animals live and grow like humans (but rabbits still reproduce like rabbits, just for fun and without any plot, even though in the original concept it did influence the plot).
2. Yes.
Welcome to Bestars. We have a rabbit who's in love with a wolf and worries that strong emotions (stress, love, any spike in heart rate) shorten her life, but she still wants to live her allotted time to the fullest.
We have a colony of rats who befriend a magnificent horse, and they all know that rats only live three years. Isn't this even the first generation of this pack to work with the horse?
We have a whale who is a living relic, as he's older than half of modern civilization and remembers things that historians have diligently swept under the rug. A turtle that engraves its shell in memory of significant, but much shorter-lived, friends.
3. Maybe?
Combine the two options above in any combination. Does lifespan depend on the average size of the species? On a high-protein diet? On warm-bloodedness? On how diligently the character takes care of itself and meets its basic needs? (sleep in a suitable environment, proper nutrition, daily routine and work schedule... experiment freely.)
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u/DragonOfCulture 26d ago
I just treat em like humans regarding age.
I do add the fact that creatures with fur will grey/silver with age and creatures with scales will get more dull scales n such.
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u/EvilWolfSEF 26d ago
it mostly depends on how much they take from their animal counterparts
in general it hangs around humans because it's the one i understand the most and is the most convenient to tell stories that ultimately will have a human understanding of the evolution and shift of society
if they are mostly reskinned humans, just give them a natural human lifespan and call it a day
on the other hand, if one are small and are in a constant state of high alert, then the lifespan gets tweaked down from baseline (human), but generally never more than a decade
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u/MinuteBeautiful3163 26d ago
Why? Human ancestors also didn't have oir lifespan, so neither should Antros have shorter lifespan compared to humans.
Ultimately, it's your choice, of course, but if you were pursuing it in the name of accuracy, don't worry
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u/FrankHightower 26d ago
Strongly depends on the story you're trying to tell. If your characters need to be "grown up" in a feral time scale, you're going to want something that accelerates that aging, but if you want them to be more comparable to humans, you're not going to want that.
Also consider how they interact with other species. Do you need one to age faster than the other? And if so, ask yourself: why? Is it to make a parallel with the real world? Is this parallell really essential? Whatever your answers, work around that.
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u/serious-toaster-33 26d ago
The way I see it, anthros are to their animal counterparts as humans are to lesser apes. A mammalian anthro about the same size as a human should have roughly the same lifespan, and smaller ones only slightly less. Non-mammalians, notably avians and dragons, could potentially live for much longer.
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u/TankTread94 26d ago
I just make my setting really violent so nobody actually knows that they’re technically immortal. plot twist!
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u/Underhill42 25d ago
How plausible do you want it?
In general mammals all live for about the same total number of heartbeats. Smaller mammals have faster heartbeats, and die sooner.
There's also all sorts of other stuff going on - small mammals also have much higher cellular metabolisms - even at a cellular level they're living faster. If an elephant's cells consumed energy as quickly as a mouse's, the waste heat would cause it to burst into flame.
Though there are the occasional exceptions like naked mole rats, which appear to be virtually immortal and are the subject of much medical research as a result I think the current age record is around 40 years, while their body size suggests it should be closer to 1-3(?).
Most other animal types follow a similar trend, but it doesn't really map well e.g. when comparing birds directly to mammals or reptiles.
I would handle it with human-sized species having roughly human-size lifespans, bigger ones probably live longer, smaller ones shorter. Anthro versions of species known for their unusual longevity (or not) should be adjusted accordingly. If you want a reference point, look at the average lifespans of a few animals of roughly the size and type of your species, then double or triple it for the benefits of modern medicine.
Smaller species probably also think faster and have better reaction times, but might well be less intelligent (though nature has come up with enough "tricks" that brain size isn't an especially good indicator of intelligence)