Question: How can you live so long when you are so small?

Daubenton's Bat answered on 13 Nov 2017:

That’s a good question! To get through the winter we go into hibernation where our heart rate goes from hundreds of beats a minutes to just a few beats a minute. Our whole metabolism slows down. We can even go into bouts of torpor, almost like min-hibernation, at other times of year if the weather is really bad and food is in short supply. This may be one reason why we live so long. However, it may also be something to do with our immune systems. The very reason we don’t succumb to all of the viruses we carry may help us live longer than similar sized mammals. Researchers at University College Dublin are looking at bats and ageing – this is another thing that having a full Daubenton’s bat genome could help us understand!