Females Outliving Males

Dr Jean-Francois Lemaître, from the University of Lyon, France has released a study of the lifespan in wild mammals showing that females live substantially longer than males. As much as 18.6% longer than males from the same species and 8% in humans and the difference is determined by climatic conditions as well as the male sex drive.

"Male bighorn sheep use lots of resources towards sexual competition, towards the growth of a large body mass, and they might be more sensitive to environmental conditions," said Dr Lemaître. "So clearly the magnitude of the difference in lifespan is due to the interaction of these sex-specific genetics, the fact that males devote more resources towards specific functions compared with females, and to the local environmental conditions."

Other studies theorized a fundamental cellular superiority of females possessing two X chromosomes while males have an X and a Y. The theory is that the extra X in women has a protective effect against harmful mutations and that this holds true in other species.

"They show that in XX or XY systems, the XX, or the female, lives longer, so clearly there is an effect of sex chromosomes," said Dr Lemaître. "What we show in our paper is that the difference is very variable across species, meaning there are other factors that need to be considered to explain this variability."

None of this takes into consideration that the old joke, "Why do Jewish men die before their wives?"

"Because they want to."

Sadly my father survived my mother by twenty-five years and my wives both say, "You will outlive us."

And I have decades on them.

This winter Doctor Nepole checked my vitals and pronounced, "I have good news and bad news."

"What?" I feared the worst.

"You completely healthy."

"That's the good news. What's the bad?"

"You probably live to 100."

"Fuck."

So much dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse.