We FINALLY Understand Why Bats Live So Long 

"We finally understand why bats live so long" - and then a list of things we DON'T fully understand about the perplexing biology of bats. Still fascinating, but the answer you promised is... still speculative.

The immune system may not be directly responsible for the longevity. He mentioned in the last 5 minutes that bats have better DNA validation. Just having that may lead to the longer life. DNA validation is the running theory on why elephants and whales live so long and lack cancer.

I work under someone who has a doctorate in mammology/ecology and he specializes in bats, so I feel the need to correct some information on this video if you are interested in learning about bats. Firstly, bats are indeed as susceptible to disease as other animals. Currently they are more susceptible than other species and many of them are at risk of becoming extinct. White-Nose syndrome is a disease affecting all bat species caused by a fungus which was first seen in 2016. It has a mortality rate of over 90% and kills bats mostly by disrupting their hibernation, leading to them using vital fat reserves and dying of starvation. In severe cases it can cause them to be unable to breathe due to covering the rostrum or cause wing damage as the fungus actually penetrates tissues. Bats are not immortal, they are in severe risk if a cure isn't found. Secondly, the postulate that he is referring to with body size and lifespan is definitely something that we see a lot happen in biology, but as with anything else there are major exceptions to these patterns. The naked mole rat is the most extreme example I can think of because they can live up to 30 years, when compared to their most related extant cousins, all rodents which have lifespans of years in some species. Bats are very, very distant from rodents, they are closer to whales, all carnivores, giraffe, horse, etc than to us which all have lifespans similar to bats. We are closer to rodents than rodents are to bats. Phylogeny can be a better way to understand lifespans in animals because in most cases closely related species tend to have longer (K selected) lifespans or shorter (R selected) lifespans. Like anything though there are always exceptions that we don't understand.

Now it makes sense why Batman sounds like he has a serious permanent throat infection, and never dies.

I know of two age records for bats, one (39) from Alberta, Canada, and the other (41) from Russia. It would be interesting to know if microbats from warm climates, that don't spend half their lives hibernating, are also of comparable length. Btw, the Alberta record was from a living wild bat that had been banded as an adult, so could be even older.

You missed the biology of birds. A rat who lives about 3 years has the same body weight and high metabolic rate as a pigeon. But the lifespan of pigeons is 35 years. And they tend to never look old. Instead of carnosine made in the liver from two amino acids, (beta-alanyl-L-histidine) as an endogenous anti-glycation agent, birds manufacture anserine, which is 7 times more powerful an anti-glycation agent as carnosine.

Makes sense for an animal that lives in large colonies to evolve greater resistance to social contact diseases.

I’ve always loved bats, and this cements my desire to help them.

My late father remembered seeing syphilis being treated with malaria at the psychiatric hospital where he worked in Sussex, maybe late 1950's or early 1960's

Bombing bats help to spread rabies rather than eliminate the threat to us. Before the bats were concentrated in one area, after the bomb those that survive fly off to new locations . Another reason why bats have special immune systems is that they range far and wide and come into contact with many more animal species. Since many live in large concentrations they need to be versatile in how they handle diseases.

When this medicine is available there is 0 chance poor people get access

It's Morbin' time!! Loved this video! I did find it funny where you mention a study where they give bats ebola then immediately show a clip of a bat biting a gloved finger!

Subscribed!! I love it. My interest in longevity biology naturally lead me into an interest in bats long before covid outbreak. What delight to see a basic summary of all I have read over many years into one short video. Thanks for making these facts about these remarkable creatures and the interplay between disease and the immune system widely available and more accessible to the public. You now have another regular viewer!

There is another way of looking at this. Activity promotes circulation. Circulation aides the immune system. It isn't just the high body temperature but the circulating of the blood that aides the immune system. If I feel a bit down, like I may be coming down with something, I will go for a run, bike ride or hike. When I get back I feel 100% again. It is just movement promoting blood circulations which makes it easier for the immune system to do it's job. The only illness I've had in the past 35 years is disentery which I got from drinking hand squeezed lemonaide in Peru. In my defense, the beer there tastes like crap and I need a break from it. I should have gotten bottled soda. The point is that attempting to list a single thing as the sole reason for the bat's longevity and resistance to illness is a ignorant, at best.

Super-interesting coverage! Thanks!🙏

Personally the most attractive feature in a bat as a mammal, is it ability to fly - anyone working on that?!? ;) Thanks as always for your great content.

Imagine what would happen if we didn't have bats to do their job. Whatever niche they're into that requires them to be able to carry massive loads of illness, it's probably something we'd like to be kept in check by the bats.

Fever theory is kind of correct. The nightly fevers from flying hold the virus count at a low level. Thus giving the bat time to produce antibodies to said virus.

Absolutely fascinatingly educational. Well done!

First vid from you and I'm already subscribing, good job doc 😉

Bats are like mr. Burns. They have so many diseases that one ends up fighting another, thus leaving the host alone for living long. 😂😂😂

Theres actually a two stage immune response in humans when you think about. 1. Body temperature. 2. Indleness. In constrast, on serveral occasions when I start to feel sick and probably against better advice, I will go for a run. Specifically to get the blood flowing through my system as efficiently as possible, rather than stagnating. So perhaps two very different methodologies are at play. One hyper accelerates blood chemistry/temperature, while trying to keep disease transfer minimised, through low flow rates. One hyper accelerates both blood chemistry/temperature and efficiency/flowrate to kill disease as rapidly as possible, ignoring the transfer rate. Stasis vs hyperflow. Be interesting to see how fast the blood chemistry is in bats, if there is little to no serious inflammation. Perhaps this is done the opposite way around too. At least in relative terms. Preffering a high flow filtration system, might explain why there is few if any zombie cells in bats. Yet serious accumulation in humans. Perhaps the solution then, is to hyper accelerate/filter blood flow, rather than increase immune response aggressiveness and the resulting inflamation. Thus unfit people die early. Heart disease through blockages and/or reduced flow rates, with materials that arent flushed and accumulate in the system instead. Basically, we need to flush the turds from the blood, instead of being left with something that looks like a fatberg in a sewer.

This seems like the beginning of a new school vampire flick where we try to extend our lives...but end up turning ourselves into vampires 😒😂

Fascinating! So great to learn something completely new .

So that's why BATMAN doesn't age 😆

Thank you Dr Ben for promoting Planet Wild. Their videos of collaborative land/habitat restoration Permaculture techniques and the subsequent successes are fantastic.

Awesome as always thanks ❤

Thanks for your work very simplified which is good for me. I think some of this work could cross over to auto immune conditions which also have this inflammation factors.

Honest question 1:40 Is there any documented case of SARS-COV2 in wild bat population? Or any documented case of it jumping from bat to human? I remember hearing around year ago that there were none, which was giving more credibility to lab escape theory. Did something changed?

3:51 I was not aware organisms use POSIX operating systems! Systemd too! It makes sense though. The other OS would result in a blue screen of death immediately after birth and evolution would have eliminated it aeons ago.

this video was just awesome instant subscribe

Its MORBIN' TIME. Great vid, quite insightful.

It makes sense bats 🦇 would live long, because they physically cannot maintain large broods due to weight concerns. That means in order to have a lot of offspring, they *need* to live long, thus creating a massive selection pressure to gain de-aging adaptations.

Cov from bats? Maybe pre bioengineering...

Interesting video, loved the systemclt command 😅

Great report!

you'd think any cellular ability to inhibit dna changes due to high virus loads bats might have evolved, would also have the effect of making integrity of normal dna information and consequentially other cellular processes much more robust and hence likely less susceptible to the effects of aging too...

No wonder Ozzy is immune to everything.

Very interesting. Looks like people are working hard to understand these bat benefits. It's rather impressive, that lifespan!

9:27 IT'S DIANE GUERRERO! I didn't know she made stock videos and images back then, but it does make sense since she would only become and actress at 24 and she had to start from somewhere

I thought it was from drinking blood and hibernating in a coffin

One theory says that having less predators increases the evolutionary advantages of staying fertile for longer and later in life which otherwise makes little sense given that it/he would die early anyways being catched by predators. Humans should have a much longer life span then we currently have but apparently War has replaced predators historically/anthropologically speaking

If high body temp kills infections, how does it survive to spread with the bat as a vector?

Very interesting. Thank you.

Love the cute dogs to illustrate mammals 😂

2:17 was that Dracula: Dead and Loving it?

Well done, Thank you Side note: There are no more wide forests in the UK.

The easiest way to get rid of senescent cells is to learn about how to take Fisetin in the proper way for high absorption while also taking the amount that is a threshold dose to activate the natural clearing of senescent cells.

Great video Dr Ben Miles! Very informative and amazing! Seeing those cute bats makes me want one as a pet 😂 I live in Manitoba and a long time ago i heard that one way to help the environment is to buy/make a bat house to help bats live in the city since they are a cornerstone species. Would a slightly higher city population of bats increase the spread of diseases amongst animals and humans or is it such a low population of bats already that increasing it by 50% wouldnt change disease spread but would help nature with the other ways that diverse ecosystems benefit?

Body temperature and metabolism usually go hand in hand, but it is body temperature rather than metabolism that is responsible for most aging, an experiment showed. When something does deviate, living much longer than it should, those are clues to extending life. Both bats and birds have some species living much longer than they should. They clearly have tricks. Living at a lower temperature is also an approach to living longer we see in naked mole rats, and bowhead whales. Lower temperature, of course, is no guarantee of longer life in a species. Almost all the longest lived species are much cooler, like Greenland sharks and 500-year-old mollusks. These live their lives in sub-zero temperatures. We are the temperature we are because our enzymes need a tight temperature range. Which is why we feel bad when our cores or brains are too hot or too cold. It will likely be possible to change this at some point to a lower temperature through genetic modification, though, that may have to be done early in development. It is virtually impossible to modify every cell in already complete organisms, and those cells that are not changed would likely die when exposed to cold temperatures. Combining protections seen in hot, long-lived species with lower temperature could extend life literally hundreds of years. Just cooling mice 1/2 degree extended their lives 10-20%. That said, there is no point of living longer if the brain slows down, but it feels like the same amount of time. So we may have to borrow more to speed up the brain and muscles so we are not sluggish like cold reptiles. I suspect adding some genes cephalopods have for brains might do the trick for brains. Octopuses have 168 protocadherin genes that code for brains, we have only around 80. Muscles might require genes from fish or sharks.

Unfortunately, cancer is still a major health issue in 2024.😔 I hope research on bats could help us find real solutions.

I just thought of a great movie idea. Researchers are trying to create life extending science for humans and create human vampires instead. 28 Days move over, 33 Nights is the new hotness.

There was human testing on hyperthermia as cure. The first subject died then the researchers learned to adjust the ph change in blood and increased head (brain cooling). It showed some cancer death and considerable virus death.

The same factors that allow bats to live to greater ages than similarly sized mammals like rats have the same effect in parrots and some other birds, there are a number of parrot-sized birds that live for around 40 years and much greater ages are claimed for some parrots but are difficult to verify. Small birds and mammals have a very rapid heart beat which doesn't seem to be related to their life span. I

Looks like this’ll be an informative channel

thanks Dr. Jeurac

Can I just say I really appreciate the sudo systemctl command you put on screen. Nice!

Thumperfitz, Iben's wife, here. Thanks for the fabulous video!!! Ya' know, bat's wings are basically seriously webbed hands making them the best mammalian cheerleaders as every time they fly by, they give you 2 thumbs up, so Awesome or bats!!!!!

Great video

Great video. Probably the most important and interesting one I've seen for a long time. I have been a medical doctor for 39 years. Stop doctors giving kids anti pyretics frequently. Thanks from Ireland.

Sadly, the only way to prevent and reduce habitat loss is to reduce or prevent the spread of humans.

Is the miracle cream that comes from this called Benjamin Bat-on? Like Benjamin.. Button.. I'll show myself out

Bravo Dr Miles for this amazing video on bats, my favorite animal ever 🦇 most people fear them, but I love 💕 and thank them for their service to humanity!! They're bug killers and bring us order to our world 🌍 in ways that we don't understand!! Many also believe strongly that they are deadly disease 🦠 carriers, but I think not, so again I totally thank you for your valuable information on them and I hope that people will understand that bats 🦇 are our best friends and NOT OUR ENEMIES!!! 😊

Very interesting lead to something fantastic.

Ok now lets stop messing with bat viruses in military labs🤐🍻

so they were looking for the fountain of youth, it escaped the lab and 2020-2023 we all got screwed over, loss of freedom etc.

Insect diet or fruit diet along with flight adaptations like birds is behind their longivity 😊

so can high intencity exersice be the answer for a robust immune system or an overall strong total system in humans if we want to compare it with the flying ability of bats ?

My AI app is still convinced that all bats die of rabies. It's hard to find accurate info about what really happens, so this is very welcome and enlightening.

Having a thumbnail with false information is among the fastest ways for a channel I've never seen to get put on the 'do not recommend channel' list.

outstanding!

Thanks. How (& in what form) was serine residue given to humans, & from where was it gotten? tavi.

Extending the human life span will bring many other sets of problems across a wide spectrum.

Rhetorical Question - Why do we humans always want to assume that longer liFe is better? There are 8 Billion of us, increasingly fewer of us have homes to live in, etc, etc. As a 73 y.o., I accept that fact of my eventual demise. I only ask to live healthy, for the days that I am here. If we manipulate our biological capacity for longer life - is that really a benefit?

Wow, so Batty, the bat living the cave of my backyard will live longer than me. I love him❤ Every year I can't wait spring to see him again.

Fascinating.

That’s what we need tyrannical elites living decades longer 😂

Dr ben miles what size can a bat get too for i seen a bat of epic proportions much bigger than i ever though possible at the sea shore and it was trying to drag my fish away lifted it and it was at least 3.5 kg what was it a new species or what ?

40C is not wildly deleterious for bacterial/viral pathogens. It however improves all elements of the mammalian immune response, from cellular response of macrophages to cytokine release. Optimum temperature for gut bacteria is about 37C Pathogens actually do better at about 40C, but use local resources at a greater rate, leaving them vulnerable to immune system action.

Mice eat about 15 times a day, bats eat twice a day between dusk and dawn. Maybe the bat goes into Autophagy due to not eating. Autophagy is known to repair human cells.

Great video! Do you know where I can find a link to how Bats evolved flight? It just seems to me that there would be no benefit to bats' survival in the middle stages of their wing evolution. Why did those bats survive better and pass on their genes when they haven't yet achieved flight? Thanks!

the part about fever killing or inhibiting the replication of pathogen is a misrepresentation of the function of fever. few specific pathogens have such strict temperature requirements that they get weakened by a mere fever. for most pathogens those temperatures help them strive and a rising internal temperature would send you into cardiac arrest long before it kills any pathogens. the actual role of fever is favor various immune functions, it increase the mobility, proliferation and effectiveness of several immune cells, such as leukocites and t cells.

Put the transcript of this video in Chat-GPT to summarize what he said into a minute video.

Didn't expect to see a systemd reference in a video about bats, but I ain't mad 😸

Bats have ao many cool adaptations... I feel like there is lots of potential for a cool batfolk type thing in fantasy settings ot ttrpgs.

Bats are awesome, I so wanted one as a pet when I was a child! Sadly I was never able to convince my parents this was a good idea 😂

So what if its a click bait title... Look at all the internet know-it-alls. This man provided a lot of great knowledge and insight, Cant anyone just say thanks great video? THANKS DR BEN GREAT VIDEO.

Illuminating.

haha, the linux sudo command insert was very funny! :)

How does the immune response processes in bats relate to consuming 2000-5000 mg of lauric acid on a daily basis for humans? Assuming lauric acid or monolaurin creates an environment that makes it hard for infectious entities from building up in the body, then wouldn't this reduce the amount of inflammation entities in the body that are also destructive within the body? If so, then could using coconut oil, or lauric acid supplements, might help slow our own aging? Also, could the body's reaction to such infectious entities or other substances be a big part of the real reason for other conditions, like high cholesterol and similar things?

Thank you Dr Ben for such an excellent and informative video :) Thank you also for mentioning how continued habitat destruction is a primary driver of extinction threats. Let us learn to respect all life and respect the unique gifts each species has to offer.

Like when you get a cold you gotta sweat it out by doing some gardening or exercise to heat up your body so much that you get over the cold quicker

All these discoveries are great. Unfortunately we still lack many tools to achieve viable therapies. There is so much to discover! What a time to be young!

Actually, sitting in a hot tub or sauna…or even a 45 minute hot shower that raises core temperature 1 to 1.5 degrees once a day is associated with better sleep, increased growth hormone secretion, and enzymes associated with autophagy.

Bravo!

What if their resilience have to do with the way they sleep or because they do in the day time, or fully surrounded by air. They have been designed to have a warm blood at night when it is colder, and still be ok sleeping fully exposed in the day time when it is warmer. For heart rate is not the only specific trait of bats.

Hummingbird: hold my beer!

3:53 I high appreciate your Linux reference.

One fascinating additional issue, not addressed in this video: maximal metabolic capacity. Several years ago, a book, "Power, Sex and Suicide" by Mark Lane addressed a fascinating phenomenon, having to do with "excess" mitochondrial capacity. If you look at the weight vs. longevity graph, birds live much longer than "expected." A finch smaller than a mouse lives 30 years, and 3 lb. parrots can live 90. Turns out a trained endurance athlete can increase his/her metabolic rate with exercise by a factor of 2.5. A bird can do a lot more than 20. This "excess" reduces the generation of reactive oxidative chemicals that are detrimental to health and longevity. I wonder how bats do in terms of "mitochondrial reserve."

Lol do you use linux in your job or at home ^^? Nice video.