You know someone is playing the numbers on how long you are likely to live. Our neighbor is ninety and I know someone who is eying his house. We are considering a Met Life annuity and we can’t decide whether it is a better idea for us or the insurance company. My life life expectancy is 78 years but I am determined to prove someone wrong. There so many deer around here and as soon as we get to know some of them, like “dog deer” and the “one eared deer”, they disappear. So I assumed they only lived for three years or so but, wrong.
Rich Stim has created a video called “Animal Life Spans” that provides some surprising statistics. Deer live 10 to 15 years. Elephants do better in the wild than in captivity, just the opposite for guinea pigs. And Daddy Long Legs make it through the winter and live three years. And those carpenter ants in your ceiling live for seven years.
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i read once that the average animal gets a billion heartbeats in an average life span, but the average human is worthy of 4 billion. i can’t back this up with any research.
“People don’t live or die. People just float.”
Bob Dylan, “The Man in the Long Black Coat” OH MERCY
Missing from the ‘extras’ disk of ‘animal life spans,’ — I filmed a lot of the animals at the S.F. zoo (pre-tiger attack). Everything was going okay — kangaroo, hippo, polar bear — but then when I got to the carousel area and tried to shoot a wooden horse, the guard told me to leave — single male with video camera in an area with kids. Okay, I understood her paranoia. I was going to explain it was for a video of animal life spans but realized that wouldn’t make sense (how long is the life span of a wooden horse, anyway?). I did get the shot but concluded next time I should rent a family to film with me in public (or else go back to filming bobbleheads).