Ants don't get Alzheimer's
Wednesday, February 3, 2016 - 05:41
in Biology & Nature
It's a poignant fact of life: no matter how much we exercise, or how many wheatgrass smoothies we slurp, our bodies still age. As the years pass, skin wrinkles, eyesight falters, hearing fades. It's called senescence—the natural course of aging. All animals succumb, except a rare and lucky few: the rougheye rockfish, for instance, can live more than 200 years with negligible signs of aging; ocean quahogs more than 500 years before dying from disease, accident, or predation. Such rare, ageless animals are a scientific curiosity, perhaps holding clues to how and why we humans age. And now, scientists at Boston University have added another critter to the list of forever young: minor workers of the ant Pheidole dentata.