WEBVTT - Where’s my eternal youth? Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:14.159 Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:16.760 Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:19.439 Joe McCormick and Robert I want to ask you about 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:22.680 a Greek myth, you know, the myth of tiffan Us. 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:25.479 This is not one that I am am readily familiar 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:27.120 with off the tof of my head. Well, it's one 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:31.080 of those great ones with doomed lovers. Doomed lovers just fantastic. Yeah, 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:34.000 is there does a god show up and act particularly 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.320 crappy towards mortals? Uh not. I don't know if it's 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:40.040 on purpose. You do get Zeus being a jerk, but 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:42.879 it might be like he's a jerk by accident, or 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:44.960 maybe he's a jerk on purpose. It's kind of hard 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.880 to tell because being a jerk is kind of Zeus 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:52.000 is default thing in general. Yeah, Zeus in this myth 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:54.640 acts kind of like the Monkeys Paul and the classic 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:57.640 short story where you get the wish but not quite 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.560 in the way you wanted it. So here's how it goes. 0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:03.400 And this is the version that's in the Homeric Hymn 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:09.679 to Aphrodite So the myth involves the goddess aos Aus 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:12.839 is the goddess of Dawn, and she falls in love 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:17.560 with a mortal man from Troy named Tiffanus. And this 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:20.120 is horrible, right, It's horrible for a goddess to fall 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:22.399 in love with a mortal because while the gods may 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:25.880 live eternally, dining on the ambrosia and just going on 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:30.200 into the future, of course, mortal people, as the name implies, 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:33.319 will die. And she hates this idea. She hates the 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:35.760 idea that the man she's fallen in love with will 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:38.679 someday die while she gets to go on living forever. 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:41.800 She can't bear the thought of it. So she goes 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.319 to Zeus and she makes a request, well you grant 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:50.360 my lover, Tiffannus, eternal life, and Zeus does it. Usually, 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:54.360 you know, usually Zeus is a jerk, but here he's like, yes, yes, 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:56.320 I will do that for you. Aos. Well, maybe he 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:58.600 was busy and he's just like, okay, yeah, I'll just 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:00.520 go ahead and check this off the list because I've 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:03.200 I've got this, uh, this other torment in mind for 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:05.559 another mortal, right, don't have time to be a jerk. 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:09.359 Just bam eternal life, you will not perish and die 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:12.720 like the other mortals. But then it takes a dark turn. 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.399 So let me read from the translation of the home 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:19.639 Eric him to Aphrodite, And this is translated by Hugh 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:25.000 Evelyn White quote. So also golden throned Aos wrapped away 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:28.120 tithan Us, who was of your race and like the 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:31.919 deathless gods. And she went to ask the dark clouded 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:35.600 son of Chronos that he should be deathless and live eternally. 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.480 And Zeus bowed his head to her prayer and fulfilled 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.480 her desire. Okay, so he's granting the wish. Too simple, 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:47.560 was queenly Aos. She thought not in her heart to 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:50.960 ask youth for him and to strip him of the 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.400 slough of deadly age. So while he enjoyed the sweet 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:59.680 flower of life, he lived rapturously with golden throned Aos, 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:03.400 that early born by the streams of ocean at the 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.760 ends of the earth. But when the first gray hairs 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:09.720 began to ripple from his comely head and noble chin, 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:14.160 queenly Aos kept away from his bed, though she cherished 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:17.320 him in her house and nourished him with food and ambrosia, 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:21.359 and gave him rich clothing, but when loathsome old age 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:24.480 pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:27.520 lift his limbs. This seemed to her in her heart 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:30.960 the best counsel. She laid him in a room and 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:35.520 put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:38.240 no more has strength at all such as once he 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:42.520 had in his supple limbs. M Okay, well, this makes 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:46.480 me think Zeus probably just agreed to her request because 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:48.640 all the gods know that mortals are going to ask 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:50.840 for immortality at some point or the other, and it's 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:53.280 probably not going to phrase the question properly, and you 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:55.440 should let them have it because it will teach them 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:58.760 a lesson. Well, yeah, he'll learn when he's old and 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:03.560 babbling and decrepit but cannot die. Because global myth cycles 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:08.560 are filled with stories of of immortality gone wrong. You know, 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:13.400 it's either a wandering immortal who's doomed or or lovers 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:17.600 who you know, obtain a portion of immortality and it's mishandled. 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:20.080 There's a there's a wonderful example of this in the 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:24.640 in Chinese myth with the the Elixir of Immortality and 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.360 the and the Woman of the Moon. Oh does it 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:29.279 come back to bite her or come back to bite 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:31.920 the person who wants it um it gets. There are 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:34.960 a few different versions of the tale, but essentially, you know, 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:36.800 one person is immortal and the other is not. That 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:40.400 sort of thing this this this mismatch that we see 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.000 president in the Greek tale as well. Man, why are 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:45.960 there so many myths and folk tales where people get 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:49.760 punished for wanting better than their lot in life? Well, 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:53.159 because you can't have it, I mean, especially when it 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:57.760 comes to things like avoiding death and avoiding aging. You're 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:01.320 not gonna get it. So there's something refreshing about stories 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.880 in which people do get it, and it backfires because 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:06.599 that way we think, oh, well, this this thing that 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.599 I cannot have is actually not that great, So thank goodness, 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:11.280 I'm going to grow old and die. Yeah. I wonder 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:13.320 if it makes you feel like you're not so bad off. 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:15.599 It's like, well, I'm gonna die one day, but I 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.440 could be like Tiffanius and that's even worse. Exactly, So, 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.720 I think the myth is sort of an embodiment of 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:25.840 this cruel fact about human nature. It's not just that, 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:28.640 as they say in Bravos, all men must die, but 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:33.039 that all people must decline. I think Warren Zevon put 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:35.760 it best. He said time treats everybody like a fool. 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:40.039 And I think that's the case. And no amount of lawyers, guns, 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:42.320 or money will get you out of this, that's right. 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:44.520 So on one hand, you've got the idea of death. 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:48.239 And death is a sort of unavoidable fact about biology 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:53.680 because living organisms are these finely tuned factories of chemical reactions. 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.720 And if you make substantial changes to the factory, say 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:00.880 by jamming a rock through part of it, or biting 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.360 part of it off, or filling it up with parasites 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:06.159 that come up all the gears, the factory isn't gonna 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:08.480 work the same anymore. It might not work at all 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:13.120 were physical creatures were subject to physical disruption. So the 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:16.400 potential for death is unavoidable. It's sort of part of 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:21.120 what it means to be alive. But aging not quite 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:27.080 so much. This steady time correlated decline in our biological fitness. 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:32.360 Why does that have to happen? That's not physically inevitable 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:36.000 in the same way that death is. Yes, and this 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.040 is going to be the question we're gonna be discussing 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:40.040 in this pair of episodes. Now we do want to 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:42.919 drive home. We're not going to get as much into 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:45.159 some of the mechanics of aging, like we're not going 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.880 to get into telomeres and telomerase and all and all 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:52.920 of that, although that's a wonderfully insightful topic onto itself. 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:57.080 We're gonna be talking more about the these this sort 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:00.240 of evolutionary function of aging, if it has one, right, 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:03.159 aging is something that has such a cost for the 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:08.120 organisms that undergo it, like tiffanus. What pays for it biologically? 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.680 Why does it exist? Now? To underscore the fact that 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:16.040 aging is not necessarily something that is inevitable, and especially 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:19.400 not aging as early as we do, we should maybe 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:21.960 look at some organisms that do not age in the 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:25.160 same way we do. Yeah, they're there are a number 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:26.800 of organisms. I'm sure a number of them come to 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.520 to everyone's mind here. You think of ancient hoary tortoises 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:36.120 stumbling across the the ground, right, or perhaps your mind 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:37.880 turns to the greenland shark. Will come back to that 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:39.680 one in a second. But really one of the more 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:45.160 insightful examples here is the hydra, or at least individuals 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:47.880 in the hydra genus. So you're talking about the monster 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:50.360 that gets its head cut off and grows two more. No, 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:52.760 as much as I do love the mythical hydra, now 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:57.680 these are the natural world hydras, tiny tentacle creatures that 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:00.280 need to continue to wow scientists because they they have 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:05.600 a number of just wonderfully bizarre and monstrous capability. So 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:09.400 they can reproduce through a sexual butting. They have these 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:11.840 mouths that open up kind of like wounds in their 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:15.000 body and then close. There's some fabulous videos of them 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:16.960 doing that. It looks like you're staring into the mouth 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:22.000 of hell. And they have this seemingly natural inability to grow, 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:26.920 grow old, and die of natural causes. They boast low 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:30.520 mortality rates throughout their lives and apparently this is according 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:33.800 to one Dr Owen Jones from the University of Southern Denmark. 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.560 He has claimed that it would take four hundred years 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:42.200 for of a hydro population to die of natural causes 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:45.640 in the lab. Wow, well, well that's a hardy species. Yeah, 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:47.760 So let me let me back some of that up 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:50.880 here with with some more facts about the life of 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:56.280 the hydra. So their fertility rates remain constant their entire lives, which, 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:00.959 as will discuss, is is pretty unique and according to 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:06.160 um Pomona College biology researcher Professor Daniel Martinez. He has 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:11.480 repeatedly found no evidence of sinescence in laboratory caddled hydra. Yeah, 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:13.240 and he even goes so far as to state that 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:19.880 an individual hydra can live forever under the right laboratory circumstances. Well, now, 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:23.160 of course that's the catch, right. The hydra's natural environment 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:27.280 offers sufficient hostilities to make natural death by old age 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:31.679 and impossibility. You got disease, predators, water contamination. These are 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.160 the things that usually kill a hydra off in due time, 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:38.400 and likewise, scientists have yet to create a hydra utopia 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:41.080 that can sustain them indefinitely. Now, this is a good 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:44.280 point in the use of the word immortality, which sometimes 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:47.520 comes up when people are covering organisms like these. There 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.360 are a couple of different ways you could look at immortality. 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.800 One would be the Highlander version or something like that, 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:57.360 where there's just like nothing that can kill you except 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:00.640 maybe one or two little things, but that you are 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.160 generally invulnerable to death. And then there'd be a different 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:07.800 version of immortality that says, yeah, you're vulnerable to death 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.559 by injury or disease. You just don't naturally grow old 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:14.080 and die. You don't have a cap on your lifespan. 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:16.880 That would be more like, what are are the elves 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:18.800 of Middle Earth? Kind of like that, like they can 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:21.760 be killed in battle, but they don't grow old and die. Yeah. Well, 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:23.559 I mean I would argue that the immortals of Highlander 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:25.880 are much the same, Like there's a there's a very 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.640 specific thing you can do to kill them. Uh, and 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:31.800 technically anyone can do it. It's just you've got to 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:33.840 get the drop on them. Right. We should mention that 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.240 we're popping in little references to Highlander to get you 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:39.200 ready for the fact that one day soon we're going 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.640 to do a Science of Highlander two episode and I'm 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:43.960 not kidding. Yeah, you have advanced warnings so you can 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:47.080 all go review at least the first two films. Well, 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:49.880 I would say just the first two films actually, Okay, 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.440 But back to the hydra and biological immortality in the 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:55.320 real world. Yeah, so this is a major point really 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:58.800 for all organisms. The natural world is generally sufficient to 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:04.640 ensure mortality. It's dangerous, it's filled with competitors, predators, pathogens, accidents, 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.040 and all manner of additional hazards. Now, humans and their 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.559 captives tend to live in a very privileged space, largely 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:15.000 removed from the threat of predation. At least you'll find 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:17.719 other creatures with no natural predators as well. Typically these 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:20.600 are apex predators, but that doesn't mean they don't have 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:23.160 to deal with all these other dangers. Well. No, when 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:26.360 you think about an apex predator, just because there's nothing 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.720 that tackles it and tears it apart and eats it, 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:33.440 that doesn't mean that it's not subject to attacks from 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.480 its environment, right. I mean, it of course is subject 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:39.000 to disease. But one of the other things to think 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.880 about with an apex predator is these creatures are very 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.680 often constantly at the edge of starvation. And so when 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:49.440 you see the antelope running from the cheetah or something, 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.240 of course the cheetahs trying to kill the antelope, but 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:56.120 by escaping, the antelope is sort of also trying to 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:59.559 kill the cheetah. It is starving the cheetah to death 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:01.960 by a escaping. The cheat is a great example too, 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:05.280 because either cheetah injures itself in the pursuit of a prey, 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:09.360 especially if it tackles prey that is a little beyond 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:14.719 its ability or or is potentially beyond its ability. It 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:17.920 can sustain an injury that results in death, not because 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.040 it becomes infected or what have you, but because say, 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:24.880 a wounded limb on a cheetah can mean it cannot 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:28.000 pursue prey and it starves. Right, This is another thing 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:30.760 we often fail to appreciate in the natural world is 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:37.000 how how absolutely damning a small injury can be to 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:40.840 an organism that has to hunt or escape hunters to survive. 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:44.680 You also, of course have read about large cats that 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:48.720 have turned man killer and uh in some of these cases, 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.920 if remember correctly, sometimes it has to do with the 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.440 decline of dental health, like that their their inability to 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:59.200 depend on their their teeth for their traditional prey and 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:02.800 it leads to sort of a desperate switch in their 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:07.079 their selection of prey. So anyway, most most individuals are 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.520 going to die or be killed before they can grow old, 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:12.480 so there's already a low probability of being alive and 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:16.320 reproductive at an advanced stage. Still, hyders are are really 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:17.719 interesting because it give us a real world of the 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:21.520 world example of how how undying creatures would work on 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:25.760 a biological level. They're hardy, they're regenerative. They have they 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:29.440 have evolved to thrive in the harsh environments, and it 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:32.839 actually reminds me of an alien species that shows up 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.640 in an Ian em banks. The Culture series, of course, 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:37.720 go into the Culture Yeah, I mean he he always 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:40.640 managed to work so many wonderful scientific topics into his 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:44.400 his books, and one of these topics is biological immortality. Alright, 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:47.240 So we meet in the really the very first Culture book, 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:51.720 we meet the Dherens. And here's just a quick quote. 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:54.640 The Adherens themselves had evolved on their planet a deer 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:58.439 as the top monster from a whole planet full of monsters. 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:02.800 The frenetic and savage ecology of a deer in its 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:05.720 early days had long since disappeared, and so had all 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:09.800 the other homeworld monsters except those in zoos. But the 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:13.600 Adherens had retained the intelligence that made them winners, as 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:17.559 well as the biological immortality, which, due to the viciousness 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:19.960 of the fight for survival back then, not to mention, 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:23.479 a deer's high radiation levels had been an evolutionary advantage 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.560 rather than a recipe for stag nation. Now, I think 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:29.200 that might be something interesting to come back to maybe 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:32.240 in the second episode and consider whether it would actually 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:36.480 work that way and what the effect of high mortality 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:39.560 at different stages of life would have on the life 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.200 span of an organism. Alright, well, on that note, let's 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:44.520 take a quick break, and when we come back, we're 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:47.760 gonna roll through just a few other long living organisms, 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:51.320 uh that are not a hydra or an adheran. Thank 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:56.880 thank Alright, we're back. So I mentioned the greenland shark earlier. 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:01.000 This one is pretty impressive because greenland sharks live where 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:05.400 we understand now about four hundred years uh. And this 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.520 is an exclusively wild species as well. This is not 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:11.920 something you're gonna find growing old and fat in an aquarium. 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:15.640 These are sharks generally don't do very well in aquariums. Correct, yeahs, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:18.440 And no one has a greenland shark that I am 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:22.040 aware of as of this recording. At two thousand sixteen, 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:26.360 University of Copenhagen study estimated that one female greenland shark 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:29.120 uh had it was it was at least four hundred 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.960 years old, and that the species doesn't even reach sexual 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:35.480 maturity until one d and fifty. So think of that, 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:40.000 not until they've reached an age that exceeds every human 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:43.080 being who has ever lived, and that's counting unverified but 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:48.320 not mythic individual humans, right, not the Highlanders or you know, 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:52.680 like you know, biblical days. Right. Yeah. Now, of course 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:56.960 that's still not the oldest animal because there was a 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.920 clam named me. Was this the first line of a 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:03.520 children's book? I know it should be, well, I would be. 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:05.520 I would actually be surprised if there's not a children's 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.160 book about Ming. There was a clam named Ming. Yeah, 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:11.040 and Ming did love to sing. Yeah. This here it 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:15.840 rights itself. So technically Ming was a qua hog clam. 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:18.800 This is um, an Arctic variety of clam, and it 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:21.480 was discovered off the coast of Iceland in two thousand 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.120 and six. Now, at the time they thought it was 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:26.600 around four hundred and five years old, so they named 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:28.960 it after the Ming dynasty that would have ruled China 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.480 at this time. Later estimates, and this is supported by 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.640 carbon dating, would boost that age to five hundred and 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:39.360 seven years half a millennium. So this means that the 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:44.760 creature was born in fourteen and that's still within the 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:49.760 Ming dynasty, which went to four And to throw another 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:52.240 point of context in there, this was around the time 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:55.480 that Leonardo da Vinci completed the Last Supper. It's the 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:59.680 year Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reached India. That's when 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:02.400 this this thing was was born and then it died. 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.159 In two thousand and six, there was a clam named Ming, 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:09.679 and Ming remembered everything. There you go now the plant 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:12.440 where the world of course has all of this beat. Uh. 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:17.440 There's the great Basin bristle cone Pine or Pinus long gava, 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:20.400 and it can only lived to over five thousand years 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:22.200 of age, and that takes us back to the very 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:26.399 end of the Neolithic period. Work on Stonehenge had begun. 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:28.440 This was the age of the Pharaoh, so it lived 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:31.560 through the rise and the fall of the Roman Empire. Now, 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:35.080 of course this highlights that different kinds of organisms have 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:38.680 massively different potential when it comes to life span. Yeah, 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:41.040 and of course plants are very different from animals. This 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:42.880 reminds me that one of the ideas that was brought 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.880 up recently. I believe on our discussion module on Facebook 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:49.160 or Facebook group, that we should do something just on plants, 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:51.359 like what is a plant? To sort of strip it 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:53.439 down to its basics. I kind of like that idea. 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:58.720 It's a really lazy animal. Well I've got a really 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:02.240 lazy one then for you here, Uh, there's at least 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:06.560 one step beyond the great base in Bristle Cone Pine. 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.600 And this is something you'll find in fish Lake National 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:12.560 Park in Utah here in the United States. Uh, the 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:15.679 quaking aspen tree, which is also the state tree by 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.840 the way, also known as the trembling Giant or pando, 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:22.479 which means I spread. So what we have here, and 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:26.040 this is this is one where not everybody necessarily agrees with. 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:29.160 This might be sort of bending the definition a little 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:31.560 bit of what is a long living organism. But what 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:34.560 we have here is a single clone of quaking aspen 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.199 connected by a single extensive roots system that's roughly the 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.960 size of Vatican City, a hundred and six acres, thirteen 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.800 million pounds, and it's all eighty thousand years old. So 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.760 what you're talking about is a forest that is all 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:52.440 sort of in some way the same organism, right, you could. 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:55.119 It's it's not as simple as the clam was born 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:58.240 in this century and it died in this one. But 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:00.560 if you if you've been the deaf Issian enough and 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:03.280 you accept this as an example, we're talking about a 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:06.280 thing that has lived since humans first left Africa to 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:09.880 colonized the world. Wow. Yeah, now, Robert, here's something I've 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:14.680 always wondered about dinosaurs. You got to wonder how long 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:17.359 they lived, especially because this gets warped by our sense 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:21.119 of history. I think, because they lived so long ago, 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:25.280 you just naturally go to this completely illogical place where 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:29.560 they must have lived a long time. Like, Okay, tyrannosaurs 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.320 Rex lived maybe three hundred years. I mean they got 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:34.879 they got very big, so you have to imagine it 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:37.000 took them a while to grow as big as they did. 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:39.520 This would take a lot of years of eating and 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:42.919 cell division and all that. So so so surely they 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:46.040 had very long lifespans. Well, this used to be the 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:49.680 main theory. And this was in part because of either 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:52.200 size or at least the size of many of the specimens, 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:54.480 and the fact that we thought, well, they were essentially 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:58.720 giant reptiles, and so based on slow reptile growth rates 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:01.160 and their size, they said, well, big dinos probably lived 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:04.840 several hundred years. But today paleontolo just believed they grew 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:08.080 more like birds and mammals, and this cuts back on 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:12.240 their lifespans somewhat. So for instance, the Field Museum of Chicago, 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:15.840 they have this, uh, this these t rex remains that 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:18.960 they named Sue. Sue. She is great. Yeah, she's a 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.359 wonderful specimen. You get to look right up at her 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:24.719 and get a sense of the true size of this, 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:27.919 this amazing species. Can I say something embarrassing? Go for it. 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:30.399 I cried a little bit at Sue. Yeah, I'm not kidding. 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:33.480 When we were in Chicago and I'm just sitting there 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:36.399 looking at Sue for a while, I did something to me, 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:40.119 like a little misty. That's that's beautiful. I I can 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:42.160 understand it because it is like looking back in time 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:46.119 to encounter, you know, a fossil like that. So Sue 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:49.959 is a rather big specimen, or at least the fossil 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:52.760 remains are rather large and speak to a large specimen. 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:57.080 They We think now that she probably achieved adult size 0:20:57.119 --> 0:20:59.440 at age twenty and lived to a ripe old age 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:04.760 of twenty. Wow, so I am now older than than 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:09.480 this Tyrannosaurus rex was when it dies exactly. Yeah, and uh, 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:11.439 and it just underlines that what you had with the 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:16.080 dinosaurs was likely rapid growth but short lives. Now, one 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.119 sort of side question that we won't fully explore. But 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:22.240 this this may raise the question, well, dinosaurs have cancer 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:25.639 because you're thinking about rapid growth, right of course. Well, 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:27.960 basically this is the question we have to come back to. 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:30.360 But based on the research I was looking at, we 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:34.320 only have evidence of the hadrosaurs, the duck build dinosaurs 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.160 developing any form of cancer. Now that's the caveat that's 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:41.359 the only the only ones we have evidence of that 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:44.199 that occurring in. But it is interesting to think of 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:47.240 like the late model dinosaur as being the place where 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:50.000 we see the cancer showing up. We gotta come back 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.600 and do an episode on dinosaur cancer in the future. Yeah, 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:54.760 by all means, well, I want to do something that 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:56.600 we often end up having to do, which is that 0:21:56.680 --> 0:21:59.440 after we've explored a concept for a while, it becomes 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.359 more and more complicated and our lay definition starts to 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:07.080 get a little less useful. So I think maybe we 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:11.760 should ask the question what actually is aging? Now? We 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:15.840 we have a pretty uh intuitive, gut level understanding of 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:18.040 what aging is. We know when we see it, But 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:20.359 how would you define it? I mean, it's it is 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:25.600 something different from death, and it is something different from 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:28.600