Why Do Women Outlive Men? A Study of 1,176 Species Points to an Answer (msn.com)
- Reference: 0179648900
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/10/04/0427230/why-do-women-outlive-men-a-study-of-1176-species-points-to-an-answer
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-do-women-outlive-men-a-study-of-1176-species-points-to-an-answer/ar-AA1NGK38
> Women tend to live longer than men. There are traditional explanations: Men smoke more. They drink more. They tend to engage in riskier behavior. But the fact that this lifespan gap holds true regardless of country or century indicates something deeper is also at play.
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> A growing body of evidence suggests that women's relative longevity may derive, in part, from having double X chromosomes, a redundancy that protects them against harmful mutations. That theory was further bolstered Wednesday with the publication of the [2]most sweeping analysis to date of the lifespan differences between males and females in more than 1,000 mammal and bird species...
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> If a baby has a pair of X chromosomes, she's a girl. If the baby inherits an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, he's a boy. In birds, however, the situation is reversed. Female birds have a pair of unlike sex chromosomes while males have the like pair... For their study, Colchero, Staerk and their colleagues collected data on the lifespans of 528 mammal species and 648 bird species kept in zoos. The team found that most other mammals are like humans, with the females of nearly three-fourths of mammal species outliving their male counterparts. But in birds, 68 percent of species studied showed a bias toward male longevity, as expected from their chromosomal makeup.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-do-women-outlive-men-a-study-of-1176-species-points-to-an-answer/ar-AA1NGK38
[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady8433
Evolution in Action (Score:2)
Evolution-wise it makes sense. For hunter-gatherers (which we were for most of a million years) an older female can continue to dig roots and pick berries, but an older male can't keep up with the hunting party. If the older male has some talent like flint knapping that would still make them valuable to the group, but any older female can continue to cook and herd the children.
I wonder if the enlarged prostate of older men isn't also an evolutionary adaptation. If the guy has to get up several times a ni
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> For hunter-gatherers (which we were for most of a million years) an older female can continue to dig roots and pick berries, but an older male can't keep up with the hunting party. If the older male has some talent like flint knapping that would still make them valuable to the group, but any older female can continue to cook and herd the children.
And older men can't start helping out with the things older women do because ..?
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>> For hunter-gatherers (which we were for most of a million years) an older female can continue to dig roots and pick berries, but an older male can't keep up with the hunting party. If the older male has some talent like flint knapping that would still make them valuable to the group, but any older female can continue to cook and herd the children.
> And older men can't start helping out with the things older women do because ..?
Guessing... Pete Hegseth's "Warrior Ethos"? (From a guy who's pretty liberal with the hair gel. (pun intended?)) :-)
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Typically, "warriors" tend to die out early. Except the really smart or really lucky ones.
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> And older men can't start helping out with the things older women do because ..?
The football game is on now.
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You're concentrating too much on humans. This was found true in a wide variety of mammal species. (And longer life for males in a variety of bird species.)
FWIW, it feels like this study needs to be replicated, but if the evidence stands their hypothesized cause is plausible.
Inaccurate statement (Score:3, Informative)
"If a baby has a pair of X chromosomes, she's a girl. If the baby inherits an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, he's a boy."
That's true in 99.9% of cases, but the statement is false. Just like the statement "The universe only has hydrogen and helium in it." (Though it's 99.9% of the atoms in the universe).
There are some cases wherein the SRY gene of the Y chromosome has broken/mutated and therefore the baby has female characteristics.
There are some cases wherein the SRY gene, normally found on the Y chromosome is on the X chromosome, and therefore the baby has male characteristics.
And by the way, if you're annoyed by that reality, there are a lot more downstream genetic complexities that are even harder for you to comprehend.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The cases you are talking about are much rarer than 0.1% of people. For example, Swyer syndrome has a rate that is apparently less than 1 in 100,000 (only about 100 cases have been reported; that's about 1 case per 100,000,000 people who have lived). XX male syndrome has a rate of about 1 in 20,000. Obviously, this is insufficient to account for the several percent of people with social-contagion gender confusion.
And by the way, if you're annoyed by that reality, there are a lot more basic arithmetic fact
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It's certainly not 1 in 100,000, furthermore even if that incorrect stat were true if something occurs in 1 in 100,000 and there are 4 billion women in the world, the number of cases should be 40,000. And let's say only 10% were reported (most, but not all, Swyer cases have issues that warrant a doctor like infertility and abnormal genitalia) that's 4000 cases. Anyway .. your 1 in 100,000 cases of Swyer is a misdirection: "The estimated frequency of genital ambiguity is reported to be in the range of 1:2000
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I wasn't addressing "gender delusion" was I? It's annoying when fools warp reality and claim there are only two genders, just because they want to exclude trans from choosing which bathroom to use. You wanna exclude trans, that's fine .. don't peddle the "there are only 2 genders" falsehood to do it. Find some other way, such as penis vs. no-penis or something like that.
Yes they do (Score:3)
They tend to engage in riskier behavior.
That could be [1]an understatement [newser.com].
[1] https://www.newser.com/story/374426/friends-shooting-game-ends-with-one-dead-one-charged.html
Simple. (Score:5, Funny)
Because men have to deal with women.
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If men were smarter, women wouldn't have to treat them like the brain-dead dipshits they are.
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Huh. Those "brain dead dipshits" built and maintain the modern world you live in.
Lots of Other Factors Could Contribute As Well (Score:4, Interesting)
It's certainly possible that this correlation plays a role in the difference of longevity between the sexes. However, there are plenty of other explanations which can also be playing a significant role for humans in particular, including ones the study doesn't mention:
- Stress: men are the primary providers, which means that they're often expected to earn more than their partner. If they need to take some unpaid time off due to stress or career development, it's going to have a disproportionate effect on the family's income than it would for their partner. Either they need to forego taking the time off or they need to minimize it. Oddly enough, female birds are the primary providers and I suspect this has far more to do with the difference than the chromosomes themselves
- Hazardous working conditions: men disproportionately take dangerous jobs necessary for modern society. Roles in the military, first responders, builders, heavy machinery operators, miners, mechanics, etc. often have much higher rates of death than the office jobs that women are more likely to have. And then you have terrible work environment factors as well, such as exposures to dangerous chemicals. Similarly with female birds, since they're the primary providers, they're more exposed to predators while gathering resources for offspring
- Suicide: men commit suicide almost five times the rate of women. And this rate increases significantly in men following a divorce. The obvious choice for men is not to get divorced, but women file for divorce in the vast majority of cases
I think there may be something to this study, but I'm not convinced that it's the chromosomes that are the source of the difference in longevity. It's far more likely that being the primary provider, regardless of chromosomes, makes you more susceptible to an early death.
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> It's certainly possible that this correlation plays a role in the difference of longevity between the sexes. However, there are plenty of other explanations which can also be playing a significant role for humans in particular,
Which is precisely why this article is interesting.
In humans, gender roles are so pervasive that it is completely impossible to separate out the effect of chromosomes from the effects of different gender roles. Looking at 1000 different mammal and bird species takes away that confounding factor. It's particularly fascinating because by looking at both mammals and birds, they look at cases where the male has the unpaired sex chromosome and compare it with cases there the female has the unpaired sex chromosom
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I agree that the article is very interesting, but I think it's far from conclusive that the chromosomes are the primary contributing factor of longevity. It does seem like evolution has a strong preference for having different sex chromosomes on the sex of the primary provider, which itself is fascinating. I think an interesting follow-up study would be to find species of animals in which the primary provider has the same sex chromosomes and see which sex lives longer. That would settle which factor, chr
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We actually have a pretty good guess what one of the main factors is: [1]height [nih.gov]. Short people tend to live longer than tall people. Women tend to be shorter than men. In fact, that probably accounts for most of the difference. In the linked study, men were 7.8% taller than women and had a 8.4% shorter life expectancy. Other studies have reached similar conclusions. If a man and a woman are the same height, their life expectancies are likely to be similar. Once you correct for height, any remaining diffe
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6239403/
"...from the Washington Post" (Score:2)
Links to MSN. *headscratch*
Re: (Score:3)
> Links to MSN. *headscratch*
Good. Washington Post is paywalled.
Men live short, brual lives... (Score:2)
...women long miserable ones. --Unknown
XXY (Score:2)
For humans, some males are XXY (a benign trisomy) , do they outlive regular XY males?
Question and Answer (Score:2)
Q: Why do men die before their wives?
A: Because they want to.
Uh oh (Score:2, Funny)
> If a baby has a pair of X chromosomes, she's a girl. If the baby inherits an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, he's a boy.
Heresy! Sex is assigned at birth!
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> Third genders and such are an ancient concept if you start researching it
So are swamp and river/lake monsters. Just because a concept has existed for a long time doesn't mean there's any evidence that it actually exists.
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> Different people across different continents have references to a person who is neither male or female.
True. But then these semantics were often applied to people's role in their society. Such as [1]Hatshepsut [wikipedia.org]. The labels may not translate exactly into modern languages.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd downvote you even more if I could.
The problem with your argument, which disproves your handle, is that you're confusing two totally different things, Identity and Biology.
If you, as you say, have XY chromosomes, five o'clock shadow, and the cock you were born with hanging down and see a woman looking back at you, then two very different things are true. One, your identity and psychology are tied up in identifying with what you think is a woman, which is fine. However, barring any surgeries, you also are capable of impregnating a woman to create a new human, you will on average grow larger muscles than the average woman, you will never breastfeed an infant with your body, and you will never get pregnant as you will not grow a uterus. That is biology.
The inherent problem with the transgender arguments today is it seeks to change society to have people see them as they see themselves, which is ok, but also in many ways confuses the physical reality of biology, which any average person willing to listen to the argument finds absurd. If you see yourself as a different gender, and are willing to get surgeries and hormone treatments and dress and present yourself a certain way, that's your choice and more power to you. But let's not ignore the physical reality of biology either; you're far better off acknowledging the scientific facts and making your argument grounded in reality.
Case in point, the entire point of this article is about the biological fact that double chromosomes, which has nothing to do with how you identify, appears to correlate with longer lifespan. That scientific fact has no bearing on what you feel you are, and while you may choose to be woman while having a Y chromosome, you will never have a double X chromosome and are then biologically subject to the greater mutation risk described in this scientific survey.
You will win more adherents to your argument if you acknowledge immutable facts.
Sex is not gender [Re:Uh oh] (Score:5, Informative)
> Yes, this article is transphobic trash.
The article is not transphobic. The article is about sex, that is to say, biological sex. Sex and gender are different things.
You could critique the article by pointing out there exist (uncommon) cases in which human sex is not determined by chromosomes (it's more determined by the proteins coded by the SRY gene, which is almost always (but not always) on the Y chromosome). But since this article is not about humans, and second, is about whether a species is diploid or haploid on the sex-determining chromosomes, that would have nothing to do with the article
> But first, you're wrong about sex being assigned at birth.
Correct. Sex is determined at birth (before birth, actually). The humans attending the birth also assign sex, and usually assume the gender matches the sex, but they can be wrong.
> We decide our sex later when we choose our gender.
No. Sex is not gender. Sex and gender are different things.
> And since sex/gender are fluid and only social constructs you can change both at any time and as often as you like to whatever you like. If you have XY chromosomes, five o'clock shadow, and the cock you were born with hanging down and see a woman looking back at you when you stand naked in front of a mirror then you're a woman.
Then you are a woman who has the biological sex of male. Gender does not trump sex. Sex does not trump gender. They are different things.
(and, before you bring it up, intersex is a different thing than transsex.)
See, for example, the opening of this, an article discussing the issue at hand: [1]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
or the longer discussion here: [2]https://www.who.int/health-top... [who.int]
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1180842/
[2] https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender
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The thing is, it's not entirely binary. Mainly so, of course, but there are various small percentages that aren't. Like "XXY". Also some of the "male sex genes" occasionally find themselves in a totally unrelated chromosome. Not often, but it happens. It's even been argued that the Y chromosome is in the process of disappearing. Not, be it noted, that males are in the process of disappearing, just the Y chromosome. This would involve various other chromosomes picking up the needed features over the c