What flamingos can teach us about the mysteries of aging

The question of aging has always fascinated humanity. Why do some creatures seem to wear out faster while others retain vitality for longer?

Recent research has taken a surprising turn by asking whether migration influences how animals age. To find the answer, scientists turned to an unexpected teacher: the flamingo.

Migration affects aging in flamingos

The greater flamingo, with its pink elegance, is a familiar sight in the Camargue wetlands of southern France. Here, researchers have been studying flamingos for over four decades, thanks to an extensive tagging program.

This long-term observation has revealed an unexpected truth. Migratory flamingos age more slowly than their resident counterparts.

Some flamingos remain in the Camargue year-round, while others travel seasonally along Mediterranean shores.

At first, the residents appear to thrive. They enjoy safer winters in the lagoons, leading to higher survival and reproductive success in their early adult years. Yet this advantage fades with time.

The cost of staying home

As years pass, the residents decline faster. Their reproductive abilities drop, and their risk of death rises. Researchers calculated that resident flamingos experience about 40 percent greater aging than migrants.

On average, the aging process begins earlier for residents, at 20.4 years, compared to 21.9 years for migratory birds.

The migrants, who travel to Italy, Spain, or North Africa for the winter, face tougher odds early in life. They have higher mortality rates and reproduce less in their youth.

However, migrants gain a long-term advantage: slower aging later in life. Migration, while risky, seems to preserve vitality as the years accumulate.

Migration helps flamingos age slowly

The findings suggest that migration, a behavior shared by billions of animals worldwide, influences aging itself. Choosing to stay or go shapes life history.

“This is probably linked to a compromise between performance when young and health in old age. Residents live intensely at first, but pay for this pace later on. Migrants, on the other hand, seem to age more slowly,” noted Sébastien Roques, CNRS researcher and co-author of the study.

The research highlights flamingos as more than iconic birds of the Camargue. With their long lifespan, sometimes exceeding 50 years, and their varied behaviors, they serve as a powerful model for studying aging.

Understanding aging in animals

The study would not have been possible without dedication. “That’s the whole point of having continued this study over the long term,” said Arnaud Béchet and Jocelyn Champagnon, research directors at Tour du Valat.

“Initiated in 1977 in the Camargue by tagging flamingos with rings that can be read from a distance with a telescope, this program still allows us to observe flamingos tagged that year.”

The researchers noted that their unique dataset that is proving invaluable for understanding the mechanisms of aging in animal populations.

The dataset now provides rare insight into how lifestyle differences within the same species translate into distinct aging patterns.

Why aging differs

The flamingo findings fit into the broader scientific quest to unravel senescence, or biological aging.

“Understanding the causes of changes in the rate of aging is a problem that has obsessed researchers and polymath philosophers since ancient times. For a long time, we thought that these variations occurred mainly between species,” noted Hugo Cayuela, a researcher at the University of Oxford.

“But recently, our perception of the problem has changed. We are accumulating evidence showing that, within the same species, individuals often do not age at the same rate due to genetic, behavioral and environmental variations.”

By studying how different animals live and die, researchers hope to reveal not just how flamingos age, but also how aging works across life.

A universal question

This discovery extends beyond flamingos, touching on one of biology’s most fundamental questions: why and how do living beings die?

By showing that lifestyle choices, such as migration, influence the pace of aging, the study reveals that aging is not fixed but shaped by behavior and environment.

Flamingos, with their contrasting life strategies, highlight trade-offs between early success and long-term survival. These insights could help explain variation in aging across species, including humans.

Understanding these patterns may eventually inform medicine, health, and longevity research, offering clues into how we might age more slowly or live healthier lives.

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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