this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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That cannot be right. Can it? They're vertebrates. Not ageing is some weird exotic invertebrate shit, like sleeping in 1-second increments or regrowing from a bit of gore.
Hmm, Wikipedia doesn't really mention the matter, but it does say some have lived over a century. R*ddit says a bunch of things, but the most "authoritative sounding" person says they do age, just kind of subtly. StackExchange roughly agrees, albeit in a way that makes me wonder what they consider "true ageing". We don't talk about humans dying from "old age" anymore medically, because we can pin down which organ finally gave up, or got cancer. Even if the answer is "more than one".
The 70-120 sort of lifespan makes me think they do age, even if they seem spry externally while they do it, but we can't yet measure how, do to reptile biology being economically unimportant and so less studied.
Also TIL they're considered fairly intelligent, and do things like play and set out bait.
Thank you for sharing that. Sounds like it was an interesting rabbit hole. The big ones are all gone and hunted out now (in Australia). There are photos of absolute units in museums. It would be truly terrifying to see one of those big ones in real life.