Large Broods Drive Bird Parents to an Early Grave

If your parents ever groaned that you and your siblings were aging them rapidly with your bickering or loud music, they may have been right—especially if they were jackdaws. Scientists who artificially increased or decreased the size of these birds’ broods found that extra-large families make parents die sooner.

One theory of aging says that it comes from accumulated damage to a body’s cells, and that animals have a limited amount of resources to spend fixing that damage. Using more resources on something like having and raising offspring may leave an animal with a smaller reserve for keeping its cells in good shape. This means reproducing might make it age sooner.

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