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Asked by anon-186553 to Verity, Trystan, Raquel, Danny, Catherine, Andy on 13 Nov 2018.
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Verity Hill answered on 13 Nov 2018:
It varies! Part of evolutionary biology is called “life history theory” and it asks questions like why animals live for different times.
It’s all to do with what you put energy into. Animals have a finite amount of energy, and so they have to choose whether to put it into having lots of babies, or living for a lot longer and having fewer babies. Humans live for a long time, but would only really have maybe 8 or 9 babies naturally. Rabbits live for a few years, but a single female can produce about 840 babies in her lifetime!
The longest live animals can live for hundreds of years, like the Greenland Shark that can live for 200 years. There’s even an “immortal jellyfish” that can technically live forever!
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Danny Ward answered on 13 Nov 2018:
This really varies on the animal and its lifestyle. Some can live very long lives, others live much shorter. An example of a really short lifespan is the mayfly which lives for just 24 hours! An example of one of the longest would be the bowhead whale which can reach 200 🐋
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Most animals that you might find at a zoo like penguins, zebras and lions tend to live between 15 years and 50 years depending on the animal.
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