Negligible aging in amphibians

Immortal salamanders

Ostap Carmody, Radio Liberty

Salamanders are very strange creatures. Firstly, they have an amazing ability to regenerate. They can regrow not only their lost tail, but also their fingers (and some of their species – and paws), as well as damaged areas of the spine, lungs, eyes, heart and even the brain. Secondly, they have a gigantic lifespan for an animal of such a small size. If lizards and mammals of the same size as salamanders live for about 5-10 years, then salamanders quietly live up to 20-30, and one of them lived in captivity for 50 years, despite being caught already in adulthood – it's as if an animal of the same size as us lived up to 500 years.

Salamandra salamandra L. – common (as well as fiery or spotted) salamander.

Canadian scientists decided to study this phenomenon and for 20 years have been studying salamander populations in several European countries. As a result, they came to an amazing discovery: salamanders don't age at all.

Article by Cayuela et al. Slow life-history strategies are associated with negligible actuarial senescence in western Palaearctic salamanders

None of the salamanders they observed died of natural causes, and none showed any signs of aging throughout the entire observation period. In addition, the probability of death of salamanders during the study did not change depending on the age at which this salamander was first caught and tagged by researchers – when experimenting with other living creatures, the probability of their death over a certain period of time increases depending on the age at which the first observation was made, since with age the ability of most animals resist enemies and find food falling due to aging. In salamanders, this does not happen.

The mortality rate depending on the age of three species of salamanders of the Western Palearctic and their 95% confidence interval (marked with a dotted line). The vertical line indicates the time between the first and second observation of the animals.

Based on the results of this study, scientists conclude that aging is not such an inevitable phenomenon of life as it is commonly believed, and our confidence that all organisms age is probably caused by the fact that the main material of experiments on this topic are mammals. Canadian biologists suggest that studying the secret of longevity of salamanders may someday help people.

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