Animal Lifespan and Lifetime Heartbeats

The bible lists the ages of the Patriarchs from Adam to Noah

During the 1,000 years following the Flood, however, the Bible records a progressive decline in the life span of the patriarchs, from Noah who lived to be 950 years old until Abraham at 175. In fact, Moses was unusually old for his time (120 years) because, when he reflected on the brevity of life, he said: “The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10).

The bible lists the ages of the Patriarchs after Noah to Abraham

Whether or not you believe that these patriarchs lived way past the lifespans of humans, it is noteworthy.

I shared a video with the Mathletes about the animals with the longest lifespans:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0geK9.rZLJbP1IAvh0PxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTB0N2Noc21lBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNwaXZz?p=longest+lifespan+of+animals&fr2=piv-web&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01&guccounter=1#id=6&vid=ed06f735ff603ef042c774e2cdd40637&action=view

Then I shared with them a list of 160 animals and their lifespans. The goal was to list how much more or less is an animal’s life expectancy than an average human life expectancy of 80 years. For example, if the dolphin has a life expectancy of 20 years, subtract 20 from 80 and record — 60 since dolphins live 60 less years than humans. I attache a pdf with suggested methodologies for subtracting from 80. They noticed that only 5 of the 160 animals had a life expectancy greater than humans.

For third graders and above, I shared a table of humans and 14 animals and their weights, heartbeats per minute, life expectancy, and lifetime heartbeats. The method for calculating lifetime heartbeats is to take the beats per minute multiplied by the lifespan in years multiplied by 525,600 which is the number of minutes in a year. I had the 5th and 6th graders calculate the average lifetime heartbeats for the 14 animals. It turns out that the average lifetime heartbeats is close to one billion. Humans can be between 2.5 and 3.1 billion lifetime heartbeats. I had the students write out expanded form for each (for example, 2.5 billion = 2,500,000,000 and .53 billion = 530,000,000. I also challenged them to show how they would multiply the heartbeats per minute by the lifespan (the column to the right of lifespan is the product of the two). For example, if the heartbeats per minute is 60 and the life expectancy is 80, show that you multiplied 6 by 8 to get 48 and then tacked on two zeros to get 4,800. I attach a pdf with several examples of these methodologies.