Human Aging Process - Not So Unique

Do humans age more slowly than other primates? Scientists recently set out to answer this question by comparing the way humans age to that of seven other primate species.

Previously, scientists thought that humans were unique in their senescence (a fancy term for the aging process). As a species, humans experience low mortality during early adulthood, we have a long expected lifespan and our mortality rate increases slowly as we age. But clear evidence to assert that humans age differently than other primates was lacking.

Anne Bronikowski of Iowa State University led a team of scientists who compared the life histories of chimpanzees, gorillas, baboons, blue monkeys, muriquis, cappuchins and sifakas to that of humans. Their goal was to find trends and to determine just how unique humans are with respect to aging. They found that, in fact, we're not all that unique. Age-specific mortality in humans is similar to other primates. In terms of aging, we're just your average ape.

Bronikowski and her team also found that the way humans and other primates age is flexible. It is influenced not by our phylogenetic history—there are no signs of any group of primates evolving a particular aging pattern—but is influenced more by evolutionary pressures in our environment. The way we age is shaped by our environment, not our position on the evolutionary tree.

Photo © Science / AAAS. An elderly female blue monkey, Cercoithecus mits.

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