How long animals live (in ISOTYPE)
May 20, 2015 8:58 PM   Subscribe

How long do animals live? (via)

An intro to ISOTYPE
Isotype (International system of typographic picture education) was a method for assembling, configuring and disseminating information and statistics through pictorial means. Its initiator, Otto Neurath, described it as a 'language-like technique' characterised by consistency in the use of graphic elements. The basic elements are pictograms - simplified pictures of people or things, designed to function as repeatable units.
posted by aniola (37 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
I really just wanted to share the cool picture with y'all but in hunting down what I hope is its origin online I learned about ISOTYPEs. So that's interesting, too.
posted by aniola at 8:59 PM on May 20, 2015


This is great. I understand why they grouped together "insect", but I was curious and found that termite queens can live for up to fifty years, according to the Smithsonian, and are among the longest lived insects.

Also, I'm not surprised that geese live to just under fifty. They must be kept alive by the power of spite and malice alone.
posted by codacorolla at 9:15 PM on May 20, 2015 [12 favorites]


A sad chart, it gets quieter and quieter all the way down. Slightly better file here.
posted by erebora at 9:15 PM on May 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Do chickens really live for 20 years? I would have guessed it was more like two years. Now I am very glad we chose not to build a coop; I would have still been running a chicken retirement home almost to my own retirement.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:22 PM on May 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


I've heard that on average it's more like 7-8 years for a chicken, with 2-3 of those years being the height of egg laying. I knew some ancient chickens once, they would lay an egg occasionally. But they were basically living in a chicken retirement coop. Some of them certainly behaved as if they were 20!

If you eat meat, the trick is to get dual-purpose chickens and be willing to eat them for dinner when they no longer produce oodles of eggs. And/or to add a few new chickens every year or two. And/or to live somewhere where code allows you to have enough chickens to put chicken-cycling into practice.
posted by aniola at 9:31 PM on May 20, 2015


Great tortoise: slow and steady wins the race.
posted by aniola at 9:32 PM on May 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Fun! While it's true that some insects have super short lifespans, most in my experience are around a year. And yeah, an ant or termite queen of the average species will live maybe 3 years; in exceptional species this is routinely 30.

Also, not insects, but lobsters often live decades, as do many types of mollusks. I find that so interesting - all these tiny critters far outliving the mighty lion or whatever.
posted by Buckt at 9:36 PM on May 20, 2015


Suspicious lack of fish, Japanese Koi have reportedly lived for some 200yrs, sharks can live 30yrs on average and whale sharks up to 100yrs.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:37 PM on May 20, 2015


I remember reading that among mammals, generally speaking all of them live the same length of time, measured in heart beats. Smaller mammals die sooner and their hearts beat faster.

The one exception was humans, who live about twice as long as they should, based on number of heart beats.

Meanwhile, don't forget the 17 year cicada.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:53 PM on May 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Do chickens really live for 20 years?

Yes, most definitely. Back in middle school I took care of a 23 year old rooster at the living history museum where I worked. He was smart and tough as nails up to the bitter end, with three inch spurs and an uncanny ability to identify and harass aviophobes.
posted by fifthrider at 9:54 PM on May 20, 2015




Antarctic sponges do pretty well, too. I guess they probably didn't know about the longevity of the Antarctic sponge in 1939!
posted by aniola at 9:57 PM on May 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


DOGS LIVE FOREVER SHUT UP!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:35 PM on May 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


(ahem)

Biologists are especially interested in Hydra because of their regenerative ability; they appear not to age or die of old age.
posted by belarius at 10:38 PM on May 20, 2015


The regenerative ability was explained really well in the first comment at the bottom of https://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2012/11/first-we-get-proof-heaven-now-secret-imm/.
posted by aniola at 10:50 PM on May 20, 2015


I was actually expecting whales to live longer. I don't know, they just seem ancient.

A tiny bit of reasearch led me to the bowhead whale though, that live up to 200 years.
posted by Harald74 at 11:12 PM on May 20, 2015


No humans. Humans are not animals?
posted by Mister Bijou at 11:24 PM on May 20, 2015


How long do different plants live? Like my goddamn withering cilantro?
posted by oceanjesse at 11:38 PM on May 20, 2015


It is not known how much longer Ming might have lived had it been left in place on the ocean floor.

Assuming that Ming lived for 500 years and filtered about 1 liter of water per hour [1], the amount of ocean that flowed through that little clam's body equates to a volume on the order of an olympic-sized swimming pool.

I just spent an embarrassingly long time looking up clam filtration rates.
posted by bismol at 11:39 PM on May 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


I wonder whether experienced time is more equal. I can believe that whales and tortoises live slowly and so would experience a year as relatively short, while mice are sort of frenetic and it wouldn't surprise me if they packed a weeks' worth of lived experience into every day.
posted by Segundus at 1:16 AM on May 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


lobsters often live decades

I don't know how often they do but I am pretty sure crayfish can live a long time. I found one washed up in the back yard after a flood that was the size of a lobster. Mom said it must be very very old and to take it down to the receding creek.

35 years later science discovered "giant crayfish." Science can kiss my ass if they think they found giant crayfish. No sir, that was me and mine was bigger than yours. If that thing had been red, nobody would have doubted it was a lobster.

Most North American crayfish, he adds, live no more than three or four years and occasionally grow to 4 or 4 1/2 inches long (from the tip of the body to the tip of the tail). The two discovered in 2009, he estimates, were 4 to 5 years old and could be part of the largest species of crayfish in North America.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 1:32 AM on May 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


Earthworms are far more long-lived than I expected.
posted by Gordafarin at 3:00 AM on May 21, 2015


Great tortoise: slow and steady wins the race.

I remember being told as a kid that part of why they lived so long was the long, slow breathing they did. Which led to a brief period of time where I tried to mimic that so I could live forever.

I get kind of embarrassed thinking about me as a kid. But, having recently seen photos of kids spray painting their faces to mimic Mad Max, I realize I could have made far worse life choices.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 5:14 AM on May 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Immortal Jellyfish got 'em all licked...
posted by Devonian at 5:30 AM on May 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


It is not known how much longer Ming might have lived had it been left in place on the ocean floor.

However, it is known that he was delicious coated in breadcrumbs, flash fried and dipped in tartar sauce.
posted by briank at 6:14 AM on May 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


My bird will no doubt outlive me. That's why I'm maxing my credit cards.
posted by Splunge at 6:19 AM on May 21, 2015


My bird will no doubt outlive me. That's why I'm maxing my credit cards.

That seems selfish. All you have to do is leave him with a little seed money.
posted by codacorolla at 6:31 AM on May 21, 2015 [8 favorites]


The worst part about the insect is that they used a dragonfly icon. It varies by species, but dragonflies frequently live for years underwater as aquatic nymphs before transforming into the winged critters we recognize.
posted by gueneverey at 7:50 AM on May 21, 2015


So, the hare lives an average of 5 years and can achieve a speed of 45 mph. Assuming 8 hours a night sleep, 4 hours a day napping and 4 hours more for dilly-dallying and chatting up the lady bunnies, this means that a hare can travel 657,000 miles in a lifetime.

The tortoise lives 150 years and has a top speed of 0.3 mph. Assuming no rest because of their innate sense of slow and steady, this works out to be 394,470 miles in a lifetime.

Aesop, you lied to me.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:18 AM on May 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


Suspicious lack of fish

dragonflies frequently live for years underwater as aquatic nymphs


Yes, there's an undeniable bias at work against water-based creatures.

NOT AQUARIST
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:27 AM on May 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


It could be that they were working with 75 years less of accumulated knowledge.
posted by aniola at 9:37 AM on May 21, 2015


I seem to remember reading somewhere that a virus given unlimited resources and a perfect "ecosystem" with nothing trying to kill it like your immune system or medications would live forever.
posted by Justin Case at 11:32 AM on May 21, 2015


Neat!

Though, if we're invited to pick nits, a log scale on the y-axis seems like an obvious choice, instead of a random break at 70. And, distinguishing between heron and crane but including all insects in a single bin seems really weird. Also, for the purposes of contemplating scaling laws, which is the obvious thing to consider here, drawing the rat at 1/3 the length of the whale seems incompatible with the goals of isotype.

Still, I'd never heard of isotype before, and I'm glad I have. Thanks!

Also, sorta, previously
posted by eotvos at 12:09 PM on May 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Seriously. No orange roughy?
posted by JaredSeth at 2:18 PM on May 21, 2015


I've been trying to figure out how to comment on the "men married in Germany" ISOTYPE, but I'm not quite sure what to say about it, other than, perhaps, that we have come a long way in 75 years, and for that I am glad.
posted by aniola at 5:16 PM on May 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Chocolate Pickle: The one exception was humans, who live about twice as long as they should, based on number of heart beats.
NOTHING in biology is that regular and predictable. The "number of heartbeats" metric is a very, very loose gauge.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:25 PM on May 21, 2015


For me, this brought back painful memories of wormie (my pet earthworm) whose life was cut tragically short (in 2 sections, actually) by a cyclist. *sniff*
posted by DZ-015 at 5:07 AM on May 22, 2015


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