Age - a question for my all-knowing friends-list

[andrewducker]

Ed was asking on Facebook what it would be like if we didn't age visibly so much - after all, other animals don't tend to.

Is this actually true?  Thinking about it, most other animals don't seem to get wrinkled in the same way, nor does their fur turn completely white or all fall out.  But is this just some animals?  Do other animals age visibly the same way we do?  Or is there something odd about people?

Comments

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Dogs age visibly. Not in the same way, but grey around the snout is common.

[andrewducker]

I raised that example with Ed - and he pointed out to me that this was a much smaller change than seemed to happen to people.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

They do also have other physical changes in the facial muscle structure and stuff. As someone who has owned dogs all my life, I am quite good at estimating dog ages just by looking at them. They don't go wrinkly per se, but they do sag and stuff.

[andrewducker]

That seems a lot more subtle. People lose all of their hair, or all of their hair turns white. I've had dogs pretty much all my life, and that's not happened to any of them.

Sure, you can spot an older dog, but the changes seem a lot milder.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

I think the key word you keep using is "seem". The commenter below is right, it's a perceptual issue: we are more attuned to looking at people and therefore the changes are more noticeable.

[andrewducker]

I've never seen a dog go through as massive changes as many people do. The changes are a lot more subtle.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

But the point is that to a dog, the changes we go through will look subtle compared to the changes they go through.

I ought to dig out some photos of Gollum when he was elderly and when he was young.

[andrewducker]

I'd be fascinated to see those.

I still think that a complete coat colour change, combined with large patches of missing hair, would be less subtle to a dog too...

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

1, a human's entire coat colour doesn't change, just some of the areas of more noticeable hair.

2, a dog which lives to the kind of old age we would expect from a human often does have entire coat greyness. Hence my comment about posting pictures of Gollum when he was young and when he was elderly.