A mouse lives just a few years, while an elephant can make it to age 70. In a sense, however, both animals fit in the same amount of life experience. In its brief life, a mouse squeezes in, on average, as many heartbeats and breaths as an elephant does. Compared with those of an elephant, many aspects of a mouse’s life—such as the rate at which its cells burn energy, the speed at which its muscles twitch, its gestation time, and the age at which it reaches maturity—are sped up by the same factor as its life span is.
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