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In the (other) animal kingdom, they also live longer. That the females are longer-lived is not something unique to humans, a team of researchers demonstrates this week that wanted to find out if, as was suspected, the same thing happened in other mammalian species. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ).

Since the middle of the 18th century, when this type of data began to be recorded, it has been known that women live, on average, longer than men. It is something that happens around the world and that would explain why approximately 90% of supercentenarians (people aged 110 and over) are female . Although there are social factors that contribute to this, it has been found that even when they have the same social habits, they tend to live longer, so biology seems to be a more determining factor in life expectancy.

Females were also thought to be longer-lived among mammals of other animal species, although so far few studies have been done on the matter and most of them with captive individuals in which life expectancy and aging patterns are not. they are often the same as in wild animals found in the wild.

Bats, gorillas and lions

The new study, led by Jean-François Lemaître of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), examined how sex influences life expectancy and the aging rate of 134 populations of 101 mammal species. Juvenile mortality was not included in the analysis.

Scientists found that females lived longer in 60% of the analyzed populations . Among the mammals studied are bats, lions, elephant seals or gorillas.

"We have been surprised that the differences in longevity between males and females of many species are so great. It is much greater than that observed in human populations, but also variable," Jean-François Lemaître told EL MUNDO.

And it is that while in humans the life expectancy of women is 7.8% higher than that of men, in most species of wild mammals it was, on average, 18.6% higher than that of of the males. There are exceptions: "There are not many species in which males live longer than females - there are some species of bats. In others, like some species of horses, there is no difference between males and females," says Lemaître.

Among the species in which females live the longest, Lemaître highlights lionesses, killer whales or the great kudú (an African antelope).

However, the authors found no significant difference in the aging index. In approximately half of the populations studied, the increase in mortality with age was even more pronounced among females.

Do these differences in longevity by sex also occur in non-mammalian animals? "What we know about them is much more limited," admits the researcher. "As far as birds are concerned, although there are not many large-scale studies, it seems that males tend to live longer than females , contrary to what we have observed in mammals."

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