A recent study headed by University of Maryland scientists explains why small mammals like bats live such long lives. The big brown bat, which is the most common type of bat in the United States, has an incredibly long lifespan of up to 19 years. One of the secrets to this bat's exceptional lifespa
Proceedings of the Royal Society BSmall tissue samples from the wings of 20 big brown bats collected across two periods—winter when they hibernated and the summer when they were active—were analyzed. The bats were housed in a research colony at McMaster University and ranged in age from less than a year to a little more than ten years.
“It’s pretty clear that the sites that decrease methylation in the winter are the ones that appear to be having an active effect,” Wilkinson said. “Many of the genes that are nearest to them are known to be involved in regulating metabolism, so they presumably keep metabolism down.” The previous study also created the first epigenetic clock for bats, which can reliably predict the age of any bat in the wild. This clock was used in the current study, allowing the researchers to show that hibernation decreases a bat’s epigenetic age when compared to a non-hibernating animal of the same age.
“We still don’t have a very good understanding of why some bats can live a really long time and other ones don’t,” Wilkinson said. “We’ve shown that the ones that live a really long time all share the ability to hibernate or to go into torpor frequently. That seems to be a corollary, but it’s not sufficient because hibernating rodents don’t live 20 years.”
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