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Ranked: The Life Expectancy of Humans and 49 Other Animals

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life expectancy of humans compared to animals

Ranked: The Life Expectancy of Humans and 49 Other Animals

For most of history, average life expectancy at birth for humans has stood around 30 years. But thanks to recent breakthroughs in technology and modern medicine, humans are now born with an average life expectancy closer to 80 years.

Some might argue this is one of mankind’s greatest achievements. With this rise in life expectancy, how do human lifespans now rank compared to other animals?

This graphic from Alan’s Factory Outlet covers the life expectancy of 50 different animals ranging from amphibians to arthropods, and even includes one species that’s immortal (well, in theory).

Let’s take a closer look at lifespans in the animal kingdom.

The Longest Living Things

Here are some of the longest living animals, where even with advancements in modern medicine, humans are likely far off from matching.

The Deep-Sea Tube Worm

The deep-sea tube worm, also known as Riftia pachyptila, lives until about 250 years old, though in some cases this can stretch much further.

Amazingly, they have no digestive system, mouth, or anus, and thus do not consume food to survive in a traditional sense. Instead, the bacteria living inside their bodies helps to transform the sulfur from nearby hydrothermal vents into energy.

This makes the deep-sea tube worm one of the few animals on Earth that does not derive its nutrients (either directly or indirectly) from sunlight.

The Immortal Jellyfish

The immortal jellyfish, otherwise known as Turritopsis dohrnii, is biologically immortal.

How is this possible?

Essentially, these creatures revert and transition backwards from sexual maturity towards sexual immaturity in a process called transdifferentiation—where adult cells are converted into other types of tissue. Not surprisingly, processes like these are getting plenty of human attention in gene therapy and scientific research.

Giant Barrel Sponge

The giant barrel sponge can live for 2,300 years. These cool creatures live on the reef surface of the ocean, and are bowl shaped, which provides habitat for many other invertebrates including crabs, shrimps, as well as fish. In addition, sponges have no tissue and each of their individual cells can do the same job of any other cell.

Some experiments have even shown sponges reform and have their cells swim back together when blended up in a blender. If they didn’t, that would be a very cruel experiment.

Human Lifespans: A Rising Trend To Watch

The number of centenarians—those 100 or more years old—stands at 570,000 today.

Here are the countries where they are most common compared to their respective populations.

Country/Region% Of Population
Japan0.062%
Uruguay0.061%
Hong Kong0.047%
Puerto Rico0.045%
France0.030%
Spain0.028%
Italy0.028%
Cuba0.027%

While figures in the one-hundredth of a percent range may sound underwhelming, this is still a 1,500% jump from the 33,000 centenarians that lived in the 1950s.

Slowly but surely, as human life expectancy continues to grow, our species seems destined to climb up the age ladder—and who knows, we may even be able to eventually live beyond some of the other creatures on this list.

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Maps

Visualized: Which Coastal Cities are Sinking the Fastest?

Many major coastal cities are experiencing local land subsidence where underground soil and rock collapse, causing the surface above to sink.

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A cropped map and ranking of the fastest sinking coastal cities in the world by local land subsidence.

Which Coastal Cities Are Sinking the Fastest?

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

With sea levels rising, there is cause for concern about the livability of major coastal cities—often huge centers of trade and commerce, and homes to millions of people.

But an overlooked area is how coastal cities are themselves sinking—a phenomenon called relative local land subsidence (RLLS)—which occurs when underground materials, such as soil, rock, or even man-made structures, compact or collapse, causing the surface above to sink.

This can exacerbate the effects of rising sea levels (currently averaged at 3.7 mm/year), and is a useful metric to track for coastal communities.

Creator Planet Anomaly, looks at the top 10 cities ranked by the peak subsidence velocity. This graphic is based on a paper published by Nature Sustainability, which used satellite data to track land subsidence changes in 48 high-population coastal cities located within 50 kilometers of the coastline. Their data collection spanned six years from 2014 to 2020.

ℹ️ Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) utilizes two images taken at different times, which are then compared to create an interferogram. This interferogram illustrates changes in land motion relative to a reference point in the satellite’s line-of-sight over time. By analyzing a series of these interferograms, researchers can estimate the long-term velocity of the ground’s surface for each city.

In that time period, they found that 44 of the cities they studied—many of them massively populated, developed megacities, built on flat, low-lying river deltas—had areas sinking faster than sea levels were rising.

The 10 Fastest Sinking Coastal Cities

One of the top cities on the list is Tianjin, China with a population of more than 14 million people, which has areas of the city experiencing peak RLLS velocities of 43 mm a year between 2014–2020. The median velocity is much lower, at 6 mm/year, which means some areas are sinking much faster than the overall metropolitan area.

Tianjin is bordered by Beijing municipality to the northwest and the Bohai Gulf to the east. In June 2023, large cracks appeared on Tianjin’s streets, caused by underground land collapses, a byproduct of extensive geothermal drilling, according to the local government.

RankCityCountryPeak Velocity
(mm/year)
Median Velocity
(mm/year)
1Tianjin🇨🇳 China436
2Ho Chi Minh City🇻🇳 Vietnam4316
3Chittagong🇧🇩 Bangladesh3712
4Yangon🇲🇲 Myanmar314
5Jakarta🇮🇩 Indonesia265
6Ahmedabad🇮🇳 India235
7Istanbul🇹🇷 Turkey196
8Houston🇺🇸 U.S.173
9Lagos🇳🇬 Nigeria172
10Manila🇵🇭 Philippines172

Ho Chi Minh City (population 9 million) in Vietnam also faces similar RLLS rates as Tianjin though its median velocity is much higher at 16 mm/year.

Chittagong, Bangladesh, Yangon, Myanmar, and Jakarta, Indonesia, round out the top five fastest sinking coastal cities by relative land subsidence. They all face a similar web of contributing factors as the authors of the paper note below:

“Many of these fast-subsiding coastal cities are rapidly expanding megacities, where anthropogenic factors, such as high demands for groundwater extraction and loading from densely constructed building structures, contribute to local land subsidence.” — Tay, C., Lindsey, E.O., Chin, S.T. et al.

In fact, Indonesia has ambitious plans to relocate its sinking capital, Jakarta, to another island, a move that could cost the Indonesian government more than $120 billion. This comes after the forecast that one-third of Jakarta could be submerged as early as 2050. Aside from the regular flooding, Jakarta is also extremely prone to earthquakes.

Why Measure Local Land Subsidence?

The researchers of this report argue that local land subsidence is largely underestimated in relative sea level rise assessments and is crucial for the sustainable development of coastal areas.

The data they’ve collected—peak velocity versus median velocity—also allows them to identify specific areas and neighborhoods in cities that are undergoing rapid subsidence and thus facing a greater exposure to coastal hazards.

In New York, for example, their results suggested that subsidence is only localized west of Breezy Point and “should not be extrapolated eastward along the coast” of Long Island.

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