On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 02:11:17PM -0800, meekerdb wrote: > On 2/17/2014 1:57 PM, LizR wrote: > >On 18/02/2014, Platonist Guitar Cowboy <[email protected]> wrote: > >>Liz, you mentioned something about gout and old age? I thought this was a > >>metabolic disorder involving excessive purine or something... So concerning > >>their short lifespan, could you clarify please? > >I read somewhere that the same excess of whatever-it-is allows us to > >live longer as causes gout, but the details have faded somewhat since > >I read it. > > > >A bit of googling reveals the substance is uric acid. If you google > >for "uric acid and aging" you will see some articles... > > > > An interesting question is why humans are so long lived compared to > other mammals of similar size. The best theory I've heard is that > having developed language and symbolic communication it became > possible for younger generations to benefit from the memories of > older generations, and so there was an evolutionary advantage for > people to live longer.
The interesting thing is that the really smart ones seem to live a long time. Most of the great apes will live to 40-50 years in captivity, and dolphins can even reach a similar age (although 20 years is more usual for them). > But that is also what puts the short lives of > cephalpods in tension with their intelligence and ability to > communicate. They don't survive to teach their young anything, so > their ability to learn is partially wasted. > Exactly. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
