| MadSci Network: Zoology |
Hi Cherryl, this is a question that a lot of scientists are asking, too - but one that I cannot answer. Every species has their own (maximal) life span, and it is somehow determined by the genes. For example Mice need only three months to grow up and may have puppies at the age of 4 months. I guess humans take so long to mature because they can (and need to) learn such a lot of things. I found some web sites that you might find interesting: http://community.net/~petdoc/lifespan.htm gives maximum life spans for some animals http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000320/immortal.htm is a newspaper article about ageing in people and factors that can influence ageing. and http://www.arclab.org/ is the homepage of the aging resarch centre, whith a lot of scientific references Eva
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