Hey, it's Flora Lichten, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Today on the show, looking for the fountain of youth in the animal kingdom.

It would be like an Olympic athlete, basically, that runs casual triathlons every day, living in an insanely long time like to 400 years.

Some animals have a very different relationship to aging than we do. They don't get cancer,

they never go through menopause, and they live these absurdly long lives. For instance,

one bat species can live for over 40 years. That may not sound like a long

time, but that's like nine times longer than you'd expect based on their size. For comparison,

if we aged like these bats, we'd be living for hundreds of years. And these bats aren't the only

super-agers. There's a whole menagerie of them. So what's their secret?

And can we learn anything from them that might help us live longer, healthier lives?

We're talking to two scientists, Dr. Vera Gorbinova, a professor and biologist at the University

of Rochester and a trailblazer in this field who's been studying aging for over 20 years.

And Dr. Juan Manuel Vasquez, a biologist and assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University

studying how super aging evolved mostly in bats.

Vera, Manny, welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you for having us. Hello.

Yeah, thank you.

Let's start with these bats. Tell me a little bit more

about them and what makes them unusual. Now, bats are very amazing. There are thousands of

species of bats, but among them, there are many bats that, as you just mentioned, live much

longer than would be predicted based on their size,

because generally animals that are larger, they tend to live longer.

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