Domestic Cats Age Like Humans, New Study Shows
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Domestic cats (Felis catus) develop the same patterns of brain shrinkage and neurological decline as aging humans, and scientists think that makes them an ideal window into dementia and aging.
leveraged 3,754 observations extracted from age-related brain variation, blood chemistry profiles, and other data to equate ages across the lifespan of humans and cats. Image credit: Sci.News / Makieni777 / Rise-a-mui / Alexas_Fotos / Dorothe / Vaclav Zavada / Artem Makarov / Daga Roszkowska / Birgit / Pasi Mammela. Cats can live relatively long lives and there is some evidence they may share aging patterns with humans.
According to AnAge, the maximum lifespan in humans (i.e. 122.5 years) is nearly twice that of great apes (e.g. Domestic cats, like humans, also have a longer maximum lifespan (30 years) than closely related species, e.g.
the European wildcat (Felis silvestris) (19 years). Also, there are an estimated 600 million cats worldwide. “We focus on cross-species age alignments across the lifespan of humans and cats with a particular focus on aging because cats live long lives and they are numerous, suggesting we may study them in large enough samples to assess whether their ages can be mapped onto a human in their 80s and beyond,” said Auburn University researcher Christine Charvet and colleagues.
For the study, the authors examined 3,754 data points collected across humans, cats and other mammalian species. These data point covered brain imaging, blood chemistry, disease-related patterns and behavioral milestones such as eye opening and the onset of playful behavior.
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