--- title: What the Longest-Lived Animals Can Teach Us About Aging description: Scientists are looking into the cells of creatures like whales and mole rats to see if they have lessons for humans. canonical: https://time.com/collections/the-age-of-longevity/7344409/worlds-longest-living-animals-aging/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-01-13T12:00:35.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:24:36.585Z article:section: Health og:title: What the Longest-Lived Animals Can Teach Us About Aging og:description: Scientists are looking into the cells of creatures like whales and mole rats to see if they have lessons for humans. og:url: https://time.com/collections/the-age-of-longevity/7344409/worlds-longest-living-animals-aging/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt062dd1ef52343a72/6998ccba66d4e35ab1cbd24e/Longest-Lived-Animals.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: What the Longest-Lived Animals Can Teach Us About Aging og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What the Longest-Lived Animals Can Teach Us About Aging twitter:description: Scientists are looking into the cells of creatures like whales and mole rats to see if they have lessons for humans. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt062dd1ef52343a72/6998ccba66d4e35ab1cbd24e/Longest-Lived-Animals.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Jan 13, 2026 # What the World’s Longest-Lived Animals Can Teach Us About Aging > Sponsored content. 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Scientists are looking into the cells of creatures like whales and mole rats to see if they have lessons for humans._ by [Veronique Greenwood](https://time.com/author/veronique-greenwood/) ## Veronique Greenwood  Photo-Illustration by Chloe Dowling for TIME (Source Images: Nastasic/Getty Images, imageBROKER/Dieter Mahlke/Getty Images, Yaroslava Alekseeva/Getty Images, Gianluigi Guercia—Getty Images) In 2007, Alaskan hunters were surprised to discover in the neck of a bowhead whale a fragment of a harpoon. It turned out to be [a patented “bomb lance,” meant to explode when it struck its target, dated to around 1880](https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/science/weapon-fragment-from-1800s-found-in-whale-idUSN12286908/). The whale had been swimming around for more than a century with this remnant of a bygone era, launched by someone long dead, in its flesh—putting its estimated age as high as 130 years. It was further evidence that bowhead whales are among the longest-lived mammals on the planet. Bowheads are not the only Methuselahs living among us. Other bizarrely long-lived creatures include the naked mole rat, which, given its size—small animals tend to live fast and die quick—[ought to live perhaps seven or eight years, but instead can last for around 40.](https://www.wired.com/story/long-strange-life-worlds-oldest-naked-mole-rat/) Then there are the bats, including Brandt’s bat, an insect-eater that also lives four decades, birds like parrots, which can live more than 60 years, and the Seychelles tortoises, whose oldest known member, named Jonathan, [is older than the Eiffel Tower and is still among us](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2019/2/introducing-jonathan-the-worlds-oldest-animal-on-land-561882). Can learning about how these creatures age so well reveal secrets that could someday help humans live longer? That question, over the last few decades, has led scientists to peer into the cells of a menagerie of organisms, and they are starting to piece together an intriguing picture. Longevity is not something there’s direct evolutionary selection for, says Vera Gorbunova, a professor at the University of Rochester and co-director of the Rochester Aging Research Center. “In the wild, most animals don't die of old age,” she says. Predators eliminate them before cancer or heart disease, major killers of aging humans, ever become a problem. Just managing to reproduce before then is a struggle. But when a species finds itself in a situation where that pressure is suddenly removed—say, if some individuals wash up on an island where there are no natural predators—interesting things can start to happen. “They start to evolve molecular mechanisms that would support their long life and the longer reproductive period in this environment,” Gorbunova says. In search of such mechanisms, Gorbunova and her colleagues have explored how organisms protect and repair DNA. They reason that if animals can live for a long time, they may be fending off mutations that can lead to cancer. In one [study of 800 naked mole rats](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00360-007-0237-5), not a single one had developed cancer. (In contrast, scientists estimate that [as many as half of humans eventually develop cancer](https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h614#:~:text=In%20women%2C%20the%20lifetime%20risk,in%20people%20born%20since%201960.), although various factors can affect this number.) Indeed, naked mole rats have [very high levels of a type of hyaluronan](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38052795/#:~:text=Abstract,has%20evolved%20with%20subterranean%20lifestyle.), a connective-tissue component that may help protect DNA from damage, Gorbunova and colleagues have found. In 2025, another group pinpointed [an enzyme that gives the creatures enhanced DNA repair ability](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp5056). Bowhead whale cells, too, contain a protein[ remarkably good at healing the breaks in DNA](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09694-5); added to human cells in the lab, Gorbunova’s group found in October 2025, it increased cells’ ability to manage damage. While unusual enzymes may be part of the story, exactly how more pedestrian genes are used over these animals’ lifetimes probably matters as well, says Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, a professor of biology at University of Birmingham in the U.K. who studies aging in cells. After all, though humans have almost the same DNA make-up as chimpanzees, [we live around twice as long](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2868286/#:~:text=Since%201800%2C%20lifespans%20have%20doubled,Alzheimer's%20disease%2C%20and%20brain%20development.&text=Humans%20have%20the%20longest%20life,evolution%20of%20aging%20and%20longevity.). “It seems to be more on how genes operate, rather than massive genetic or biochemical differences,” he says. DNA damage and repair capabilities, as interesting as they are, are not likely to be the only factor linked to long life in these animals, says Steven Austad, a professor of biology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, who studies aging. He suspects every creature will have a different way of coming at the problem of living longer, suited to its own environment and history. In 2023, Gorbunova launched a company, Matrix Biosciences, to explore how her group’s findings about hyaluronan might be used in medicine. As well, Dr. Andrea Maier, a professor of medicine at the National University of Singapore, is currently leading [a clinical trial](https://longevityacademy.sg/research/sirt6-study) based on the discovery of Gorbunova and colleagues that a molecule in brown seaweed [stimulates an enzyme that may extend lifespan](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.24.645072v1) in elderly mice. Fair warning: Aging is a process of the whole body, involving myriad systems. It’s exciting to hear that a molecule from a long-lived animal seems to help human cells in a dish. But “it's not at all clear whether the strategies that the naked mole rat uses, or that the bats use, or that the whale uses would be relevant to human lifespan and the development of drugs that would slow aging in people,” says Richard Miller, a professor of pathology at University of Michigan and director of the university’s Center for Aging Research. “It's not impossible, but it's at this point just a guess.” However, it isn’t hard to see the promise, even in a scene as mundane as birds at a bird feeder. Some tiny birds sport [very fast metabolisms](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1568163707000074#:~:text=Therefore%2C%20long%2Dlived%20birds%20provide%20novel%20model%20species,et%20al.%2C%202005%2C%20Schlinger%20and%20Saldanha%2C%202005%29.), high body temperatures, and [levels of blood glucose that would make a human diabetic](https://www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/17/5/355#:~:text=Birds%20appear%20to%20defy%20prevailing%20theories%20of,exceptionally%20high%20metabolic%20rates%20%5B%2099%2C%20100%5D.), says Austad. “All of those things, if you put them together, suggest they should be short-lived. But in fact, \[some\] birds live three times longer in the wild than mammals do in zoos.” “This is just the beginning,” he says. “I think as more and more labs perceive the advantages of looking at these longevity mechanisms that nature has produced, we're going to really make a lot of progress in a hurry.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/the-age-of-longevity/7344409/worlds-longest-living-animals-aging/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/the-age-of-longevity/7344409/worlds-longest-living-animals-aging/"},"headline":"What the Longest-Lived Animals Can Teach Us About Aging","datePublished":"2026-01-13T12:00:35.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:24:36.585Z","description":"Scientists are looking into the cells of creatures like whales and mole rats to see if they have lessons for humans.","url":"https://time.com/collections/the-age-of-longevity/7344409/worlds-longest-living-animals-aging/","keywords":["Longevity","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt062dd1ef52343a72/6998ccba66d4e35ab1cbd24e/Longest-Lived-Animals.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Veronique Greenwood","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/veronique-greenwood/"}],"creator":"Veronique Greenwood","articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt062dd1ef52343a72/6998ccba66d4e35ab1cbd24e/Longest-Lived-Animals.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/longevity/","name":"Longevity"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/the-age-of-longevity/7344409/worlds-longest-living-animals-aging/","name":"What the Longest-Lived Animals Can Teach Us About Aging"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Longevity Issue | The Longest-Lived Animals","description":"Scientists are looking into the cells of creatures like whales and mole rats to see if they have lessons for humans.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/suCvL5kw/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-01-13T11:30:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/suCvL5kw.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/the-age-of-longevity/7344409/worlds-longest-living-animals-aging/","duration":"PT1M9S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/the-age-of-longevity/7344409/worlds-longest-living-animals-aging/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```