A Bat-Inspired View of Greater Human Longevity (opens in new tab)

Many bat species are extremely long-lived for their size, rivaling naked mole rats when it comes to a comparison with shorter-lived and similarly sized mammals. One hypothesis is that the very high metabolic demands of flight forced bats to evolve highly efficient defenses against metabolic stress, and particularly stresses generated by mitochondrial activity. Other factors have come to light, however, related to bat resilience to viral infection, triggers of chronic inflammation, and DNA dam...