This is why women live longer than men

That women live longer than men, I have always just assumed. No idea why actually, it probably has something to do with the dramatic attitude I often observe in men who are not feeling well. For example, if my beloved has even a little sore throat, he suddenly walks around the house with a hunched back and puts on a sort of ‘sick voice’. I always have to laugh at that and of course I can no longer take this scene seriously, but for the idea, I still always make a cup of tea. I feel that women are very different in this: we just pop a few paracetamol and continue with what we were doing.

But well, from new scientific research it turns out that men indeed live shorter than women. Ha, so my feeling was right after all. According to researchers from the University of New South Wales, this all has to do (aside from their behavior) with genetic predisposition. The lifespan of a living being depends on the sex chromosomes. Here's how it works: almost every animal species has two sex chromosomes that determine whether the animal is male or female. Female mammals have two identical sex chromosomes (which we call ‘X chromosomes (XX)') and male mammals have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome (XY).

This does not always have to be the case, by the way. In birds, for example, it is exactly the opposite: males have two identical sex chromosomes (ZZ) and females have two different sex chromosomes (ZW). According to these researchers, animals with two different sex chromosomes are more vulnerable to genetic abnormalities, which can lead to a shorter lifespan.

For the research, 229 animal species were studied, and the conclusion was drawn that the sex with two identical sex chromosomes lives on average 17.6 percent longer than the sex with two different sex chromosomes.

This theory has existed for a long time, but the Australian university is the first to have researched this on such a large scale. Previous studies only looked at a few animal species, while this research examined countless species, such as mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, cockroaches, grasshoppers, butterflies, and many more. As a result, the researchers discovered that the species where males have two identical sex chromosomes actually live longer than the females: on average 7.1 percent longer. This is the case with birds, but also with butterflies.

Well, in most mammals where females have two identical chromosomes, females live on average 20.6 percent longer. That explains why women ultimately live longer than men. Of course, many other factors also play a role in lifespan, but I'll leave those aside for now. The most important thing is: we women last the longest.