Comments on Why Do Women Outlive Men?

Huh? This doesn't make much sense. The article seems to be saying that men, on average, live shorter lives than women because human society was marked by male-on-male violence, so men died early violent deaths. Fine and dandy. But that doesn't explain why we'd still die earlier now.

They then attempt to explain further, saying that this meant women were selected more for longevity than men. Why? What evolutionary pressure would have encouraged longevity in women and not men? It might have encouraged longer periods of fertility, but I don't see why general longevity would be selected for. During a woman's fertile years, she can crank out kids regardless of whether she'll die one year after menopause or a couple decades later.

Meh. Bad article, or bad study. I don't know which.

or bait for trolls? come and get it, sooey, sooey!!!

i think the shorter male life span is due to testosterone. men who got bigger and stronger faster were more likely to survive, and those men likely had higher testosterone levels. i haven't taken biology in a while so i can't really explain this, but i guess testosterone starts to wreck havoc on your cells around the age of seventy. this might be why married men live longer than bachelors: as soon as men marry their testosterone levels drop because they are no longer actively competing for a mate.

The article suggests that, if a stone-age man had the sort of body that would cause him to be healthy even in old age, chances are he'd get rubbed out early on anyway. But if a man had a tougher body, he'd live longer, even if that meant health-related problems down the road. If it's ingrained in our genes deep enough, and there's nothing happening to change it (i.e. 80+ men having babies), then men still die younger.

Longevity in women might have been selected for because, in absence of violent competition, it means more chances for altruism, which means more chances your DNA is getting spread around. Arguably, there's only so much that a little extra time on this planet can do for spreading your DNA, especially since it's past the age of fertility, but if the advantage is only slight, it can still manage to spread via natural selection.

Also, a longer period of fertility may be helpful in theory, but that would probably mean pregnancy during a time when a woman's body is already in danger of osteoporosis, breast cancer, and whatnot. I don't even know how women manage to survive a pregnancy when they're thirty, let alone sixty!

So... lecutre over. Not defending the article per say, just being a science snob.

Could it be that men had to learn to cope and function and compete in a more stressful environment than women? Thus we are more high strung and prone to dying earlier. It's not so much who lives longer, it's who dies sooner.

Taller men are also more likely to procreate than shorter ones. Taller men are also more likely to die of heart failure sooner than their shorter brothers. All those offensive linemen that die in their 50's.

Big and strong, but not on this earth to long

Natural selection isn't just about reproducing, it also requires the offspring to survive and reproduce. Human beings, especially in the stone age, would be labor intensive to raise. Older women, perhaps the grandmothers of the youngin's, would be very valuable in keeping those kids alive and therefore passing on their DNA, even if they're not putting out new copies of their DNA, per say.

@6: Good point. There is a complex interaction between purely genetic traits and behavioral traits, both of which can be passed on and contribute to a family's success.

Or more simply differential aging is in the mitochondria. Mitochondrial DNA is passed on from mother to offspring, and thus mitochondrial dependent traits which make females reproduce longer will be selected out. But since males are a dead end with respect to mitochondria there no selective pressure at all resulting from shorter lived males for mitochondrial traits. Since mitochondria are considered by many to be one of the keys to aging, it's a likely culprit.
In short men live shorter lives becuase their mother's mitochondria wants them dead.

I was wondering what the wimmens use was beyond the time she can spit out babiees. AH now I git it! it's to take care of the babiees

And face it, an old man in the clan is fairly useless... when he can't hunt he's a drain on clan's resources.

I'm also not a fan of evolutionary psychology but I see their point!

@1 It's not saying that men killing other men was the only cause of early death during that era. It's saying that the brutal and violent competition between men resulted in men being designed primarily for strength over longevity.

From wikipedia: Most mammals have one pair of sex chromosomes in each cell. Males have one Y chromosome and one X chromosome, while females have two X chromosomes. In mammals, the Y chromosome contains the gene that triggers embryonic development as a male.

Men are a patch update on women. An often crappy patch update -- lots can go wrong. Women, with 2 X chromosomes, have some redundancy if one of their X's is damaged, and it also provides some stability against mutations. Men do not have this.

I'd also like to point out that Women have the babies, and their bodies need to be in better working order generally in order to create healthy, strong babies. Men are just more disposable. A long life span was never really necessary for them.

And yet, despite all of this, we *only* live on average 5 years less. It just doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. Make that 15 years or 20 years, and that's something I'd care a great deal about.

Oh, I'm sure its other things, too, but I think that explains a fair amount of it.

Yup... because we all definitely lived as
"cavemen" during prehistoric times. With harems apparently.

And dinosaurs.

And little stone cars you make go with your feet.

I read a different study that said that women live longer than men because they're more willing to go to the doctor and get stuff fixed before it becomes a fatal thing.

What an idiotic conclusion. The researchers have no evidence that Stone age men lived shorter lives than Stone age women. So really, it's modern men who must be keeping these harems and killing each other off.

I absolutely hate it when people assume that the past looking like the present.

@8 Men would benefit from the long-life mitochondrial selection going on in the women. Where else would the men be getting their mitochondria?

I think the researchers had been watching "Clan of the Cavebear"
and believed it was a porthole to the past!

It sure seems to be a bigger chore every year keeping my harem together. Wrangling a handful of females is a young man's game.

that would explain why i am so big and strong.

ha! i love all the fear of science in this thread! of course humans didn't live in caves... that wasn't part of the intelligent design!

This makes no sense.

It has more to do with women seeking health care periodically and not living alone, actually.

I always thought it was because us men folk have to live with their cooking.

Vegan @ 3:

I've also heard that married men live longer than single men, but I think those men who are married will agree with me that it just *seems* longer.

Toby, one scientific inaccuracy. There is a certain point in development where one of the womans X chromasomes shuts down entirely and shrivels up and effectively becomes useless. There is no evidence that the shriveled chromosome expresses any genes (basically few if any, life is weird). The genetic redundancy doesn't fly.

The other, I think it's simply a matter of body stress. Being big and strong does not mean you are going to live a long time. European men don't live as long as asian men.

And furthermore, the studies just keep showing that large men are more prone to heart failure (Wilt Chamberlain), diabeties, etc. etc.

I think helping raising the young helps keep women alive longer, but I think it's at play is what's killing men sooner. It's not like women have a picnic as they age either, they are more prone to bone mineral loss, hormonal issues, and of course stop making babies. Yet perhaps because the chase for vitality doesn't put as much wear on their body they can live longer.

The expected lifespan of stone-agers was WAY shorter than it is now. The analogy seems incongruous.

the study says they compared mammals alive today that had similar disparities in the death rates between the male and female of the species to look for common traits. the most notable being noted in the study and mocked here.

they did not compare modern people with hypothetical stone age people. but if they wanted to, they could, because "science" is nifty like that. using it, you can tell what the average life expectancies for people thousands of years ago was.

there might be other studies as well refuting this one. but i think it's hilarious reading people here dismissing the idea because they disagree with it, not because there is other evidence. that is a religion of the flimsiest kind.

26

I was just hoping to see the age difference adjusted for the different time periods.

Stop flipping out.

i can't help but to flip out. studies amongst other mammals exhibiting similar traits has proven there is not other "scientific" response available to me at this time.