On: Ageing is not an inevitable fact of life

[s_dev]

Lobsters and some jellyfish are functionally immortal as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii

[fsloth → s_dev]

Smithsonian magazine disagrees on the immortality of lobsters:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dont-listen-to-...

Although, since they will eventually die of energy depletion from growing too large, if they actually stopped growing they might go on ... a lot longer?

[creshal → fsloth]

> Although, since they will eventually die of energy depletion from growing too large, if they actually stopped growing they might go on ... a lot longer?

If humans stopped ageing they'd go on a lot longer, too. But as long as they can't it's a hypothetical scenario in both cases.

[kaffeemitsahne → creshal]

Maybe it's because I'm not a lobster, but halting growth to keep energy requirements low seems like an easier problem.

[reasonattlm → s_dev]

A few years back researchers found a way to measure lobster age, something that had been a challenge until then:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/lobster-age_n_22159...

So give it a few more years and there should be some firm data on how negligibly senescent they actually are. Much of the present situation was a lack of good data.