Wednesday, August 29, 2007

THE LIFE SCIENTIST IN ME IS FASCINATED BY...

...A report on NPR the week of August 13-17, 2007 by a scientist whose name I can not remember, but his discovery feels profound to me.

First, it turns out the larger the animal is, the greater the tendency for a slower heart rate & metabolism. This is good for larger species, like Man, elephants & whales. They have cells that work more efficiently & the larger animals tend to enjoy longer life spans.

The 2nd thing is that even though larger animals tend to have longer life spans, all types of animals have roughly the same amount on heartbeats in 1 life, approximately 1.5 billion if I am remembering correctly.

WOW! The Heart is the seat of our power!?

Death can be predicted, given everything else is equal, based upon how long it takes to complete 1.5 billion heartbeats, for a rat, cat, dog, human, elephant, whale...

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