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Comment by simonsquiff | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone explain why dogs (amongst others) age so much faster than humans? A 10 year old dog will be grey and have other visible aging signs, whilst we're still youthful. What is the difference? Are dogs cells dividing at a faster rate than ours, and if so why are they doing that? Presumably the answer gives us insight into the aging process, but I've not been able to find answers in some casual browsing.

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Enquiry into the evolution of aging aims to explain why almost all living things weaken and die with age. There is not yet agreement in the scientific community on a single answer. The evolutionary origin of senescence remains a fundamental unsolved problem in biology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_ageing

The biological mechanisms which regulate lifespan evolved several hundred million years ago.

edit: Regarding dogs: http://www.insidescience.org/content/large-dogs-age-faster-d...

The why is easy - like everything it is because dogs that age any slower than the average dog did not have any more offspring. The difficult question is the how question - how do humans and dogs differ in their ageing process. Anyone who can answer this will be more famous than Einstein.

A more interesting question is how do humans manage to age so much slower than chimps. This has occurred so recently in evolutionary history that it must involve only a few genes. Any process that is controlled by a few genes can, in theory at least, be a pharmaceutical target.

Are you sure humans age more slowly than chimps? I thought they basically live to the same age?

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