Just curious. Do any other primates have our same approx lifespans?
No mammal has our approximate lifespan. Elephants come closest, at about 60 years. The other primates all max out in their 20s. Where it really gets interesting is when you start measuring lifespans in heartbeats: All mammals other than humans have an absolute, Guiness-record lifespan of around a billion heartbeats (plus or minus 30% or so). Humans can easily go 4 or 5 billion heartbeats. I’ve often thought that it would be a great boon to medical science if we could figure out how we manage it…
20 years!? Odd…I thought chimps routinely lived 40 -50 years or more in zoos. That’s why I asked the question as to max lifespans.
There is what appears to be a fairly reputable list of primate ages here: http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/aboutp/phys/lifespan.html
Some points of interest:
Pan paniscus (Bonobo or Pygmy Chimpanzee) 40 yrs. (1)
Pan troglodytes (Chimpanzee) 53 yrs.
Pongo pygmaeus (Borneo Orangutan) 59 yrs.
Gorilla gorilla gorilla (Western Lowland Gorilla) 50 yrs.
Hylobates muelleri (Mueller’s Bornean Gray Gibbon) 47 yrs.
Ateles geoffroyi (Black-handed Spider Monkey) 48 yrs.
Mandrillus sphinx (Mandrill) 46.3 yrs.
“Species life span is given in years and measures the maximum amount of time between birth and death rather than an average.”
So with a maximum lifespan of about 120 years humans live twice as long as an Orang and some 2.5 to 3 times longer than our nearest relatives.
So the short answer to the question: No.
I didn’t read the OP’s question that way. You are comparing the longest human lifespan ever recorded (and I’d like to see a cite that that age was verified) with the average lifespan of other primates. And you’ve made no reference to what is considered optional.
We’ve had close to a billion humans living in optimal conditions*, and maybe a few thousand (if that many) chimps living thusly. The statistics are too heavily weighted in our favor to make a fair comparison.
It should be noted that even 100 years ago the average lifespan in the US was about 50. If the OP has some specific ideas in mind as to what constitutes “optimal lifestyles”, that would help answer the question. IF we raised a bilion chimps with healthcare comparable to 1st world standards, I suspect we’d have some pretty old chimps on our hands. As old as 100? Probably not, but we simply don’t know. Because chimps are comparable in size to us, yet reach sexual maturity earlier, it is likely that they wouldn’t live as long, even under “optimal conditions”.
*let’s assum that 1st world conditions = optimal
That 120 year figure seems to be pretty much universally accepted as the maximum human age. It may not be 120 years, it may only be 112, but it’s somewhere in that ballpark, roughly twice that of the longest lived non-human. And no, it’s not a comparison of the longest lived human ever with an average primate. As I took pains to point out those figures are the maximum ages ever recorded for other primates. I am comparinng the maximum possible human lifespan (as far as we know it) with the maximum possible non-human lifespan (as far as we know it).
As for the effect of medicine, it’s probably negligible. Certainly it will have helped some people, but humans were reliably recording ages of over 100 for millenia, and even today many if not most people who beat 110 haven’t required any serious medical care to get there. As you point out the average lifespan of humans was over 50 even before modern medicine, while the maximum lifespan of othe primates rarely manages that. Be careful not to compare avarages with potentials. That 50 years figure for humans was calculated taking into account high infant mortality which pulled the average right down. The average adult lifespan would probably have been 65 or better, much higher than the maximum figure of any other primate. Meanwhile while the maximum human lifespan even 100 years ago was over 100 years.
So it’s possible that if we gave orangs first rate helath care they’d achieve a higher maximum, but it’s highly doubtful and without any evidentiary or logical support. First rate helathcare hasn’t increased the human maximum at all as far as we can tell. By preventing premature death we are getting ever more people approaching that 120 years maximum but with all our technology we haven’t moved that maximum from where it was 600 or 6000 years ago. If we can’t increase the maximum for humans with medical technology why should we assume we could ever do so for other primates?
Interesting on the primate lifespans; my information (largely from an old Asimov essay) must be outdated on them. But they’re still significantly less than us, as others have noted.
Geez, people–wouldn’t think I’d ever have to direct people to Google, but just search for “oldest chimpanzee”.
First link: Cheeta the world’s oldest chimpanzee .
Yes it’s THAT Cheeta (of the Tarzan movies). And he ain’t dead yet! I think this is pretty much exactly what the OP was looking for–a pampered chimp.
Faint memories of Jane Goodall books left with the impression that wild chimpanzees live about thirty years, with luck.
I’m not exactly sure about the maximum, but here’s a datapoint.
The last oldest living human, Hendrikje Van Andel-Schipper, died august 30 this year in Hoogeveen, the Netherlands at age 115.
I’m having some trouble finding a good english cite for this. here is a dutch article from the volkskrant
The oldest verified human died at 122 .
If we are talking heart beats, we have a life long runner with an average heart rate of say 65.
We have a hyper used car salesman with an life average of a heart rate of 95.
And they both live for 100 years.
Who had the best life?
Who lived the longest?
I’ve head the billion for critters and 3-5 billion for human thing in many different writings…