L’anime de animal
You’re such a beast, she said pouting. I forgave her instantly, she was after all English. A little argument set her off. To me it was only a sort of banter. Yet that phrase stuck with me, not her tone as much. I mean if she were playing around with tones, she could say that in a complimentary voice. Or a disgusted expression. Or just inside the mind without a verbal tic.
He is therefore older than the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge and the result of a series of highly improbable coincidences. Ötzi lived during the Copper Age, a period of the late Neolithic. He died of injuries in the high alps and his frozen remains were discovered 5300 years later. From his remains we could discover his microbiome and some fungi that had survived those passing years and incredible cold. Some were dormant yet when resurrected were usable enough to cook up a loaf of sourdough. Others were still alive and never passed into the dormant stage. The microbiome was judged to be incredibly rare and that belonging to pre-industrialized society. Only some people on earth, those who live and eat in environments that are traditional have similar microbiota.
I found a BBC video about an insect farm in the bowels of London. The farm breeds flies that are more elongated than the usual models. The larvae are grown in a box with animal feed for nutrition. And they soon become dried animal feed themselves. Only 2% of the larvae survive into adult flies who then get to live about 8 days before they complete their lifecycle and then either die of natural causes or not.
https://bbc.com/reel/video/p0ndbxk1/watch
That got me to the wikipedia page on animal feed. Which animals exactly are eating these dead larvae? We are what we eat after all. If you truly think about it. Our cells are renewed every 7 days or so on average. The heart cells require a bit longer around 3 months or so. I am not sure about the brain cells. Regardless, if each cell is being renewed through the life span of a person, age can be attributed to mitochondria drift and DNA damage. If you could somehow control for those then the renewal ought to renew. Theoretically. Entropy be damned. And yet the damage is first seen on our faces via wrinkles. Then worse. Hair becomes grayer as if acknowledging the costs. Skin becomes saggier.
The reason some people never seem to age is due to several reasons: some of it is due to chemical imbalances, yet the rest and perhaps critical part is due to microbiomes and cleaner foods. For example if we eat meat, yet the meat eaten is as close to traditional and the animal has been eating it’s natural diet and treated with mercy and care, given farmland to roam on then it’s likely better for our cells. Still our bodies when the consume another animal ingest their DNA into our stomachs. Does that cause DNA damage and therefore is a clue to why we age? If that were true, vegans would live the longest. Do they?
Eating animals who have eaten fly larvae? I am not sure.
https://www.vox.com/podcasts/491360/vladimir-putin-live-forever-26-billion-cryo-pigs-longevity-guru
Russian President Vladimir Putin has directed $26 billion into a state longevity initiative called "New Health Preservation Technologies," unveiled in 2024 to combat biological decline through advanced biomedical research. The program, which Putin personally championed in a 2025 conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping, aims to extend human lifespans through gene therapy, 3D bioprinting of organs, and xenotransplantation using genetically modified mini-pigs.
Key components of the initiative include:
Cryotherapy: Putin has promoted the use of ultra-cold chambers (down to -170°F) to preserve bodily tissues, a practice he reportedly advised Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz to adopt.
Organ Replacement: Scientists are working to print human organs and grow them in pigs, with goals to achieve full human organ replacement by 2030.
Leadership: The project is spearheaded by Putin’s daughter, endocrinologist Maria Vorontsova, and physicist Mikhail Kovalchuk, head of the Kurchatov Institute.
Critics note the lack of peer-reviewed publications and suggest some researchers may be aligning with the Kremlin's goals to secure funding, while the program’s goal to save 175,000 lives by 2030 has drawn ironic commentary given the scale of Russian military casualties in Ukraine.
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There is a part of me that suspects that there are clues hidden in microbials, insects and other living and non-living beings that could enhance human lives and thriving. That is, if you think of the human genome as a toolkit that can be adapted as necessary. And a lot of the stories in myths and religion can be done in reality. Angels could literally sprout wings (not just in the virtual mind’s eye) as an example. Or on the show Avengers. Air Force could mean a certain DNA trait while Navy would mean something else. If the Army had to choose an animal motif for DNA, I highly doubt it would be a cow. Or a pig. Or a chicken. And yet we consume those specific animals in an industrialized manner. While we indiscriminately kill off birds and ocean dwellers. Every species that is lost is a lost clue to future thriving and adaptation.
Even if none of that speculation is actually true, we still ought to leave the Earth better than when we arrived and before we leave for destinations unknown.
