In a discovery that sounds like science fiction, researchers have found that tiny primates native to Madagascar can temporarily reverse cellular aging during hibernation, offering intriguing clues for human longevity research.
Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs—hamster-sized primates that are our closest genetic relatives known to hibernate—appear to have unlocked a biological trick that humans can only dream about: they can actually lengthen their telomeres, the protective caps on chromosomes that typically shrink as we age.
“The results were in the opposite direction of what you’d expect,” said Lydia Greene, one of the researchers involved in the study published this February in the journal Biology Letters.
Most of us are familiar with the visible signs of aging—the wrinkles, gray hair, and decreased mobility. But at the cellular level, aging is partly tracked through telomeres, which work like the plastic tips on shoelaces that prevent fraying. These protective caps naturally shorten with each cell division until cells eventually lose function.
“At first we thought something was off with the data,” Greene added. But the findings were confirmed by Dana Smith at the University of California, San Francisco, working in the lab of Elizabeth Blackburn—who shared the 2009 Nobel prize for discovering how telomeres rebuild themselves.
For the study, conducted by a team at Duke University and UCSF, researchers followed 15 dwarf lemurs before, during, and after hibernation. They collected cheek swabs to monitor telomere changes as the animals entered their months-long torpor state.
To simulate winter conditions, the researchers gradually lowered temperatures from 77 degrees Fahrenheit to the mid-50s and provided artificial burrows. One group was offered food when awake, while another went without eating, drinking, or moving for months—surviving solely on fat stored in their tails, as they would in the wild.
The food-deprived lemurs experienced deeper hibernation states, with their heart rates dropping from around 200 beats per minute to fewer than eight. They became cool to the touch and took breaths only about once every 10 minutes. It was during this extreme metabolic slowdown that the magic happened.
“Lengthening may be a mechanism to counteract any cell damage that might otherwise occur during their periodic rewarming phases,” said lead author Marina Blanco of Duke.
Like many hibernating animals, dwarf lemurs don’t remain in continuous torpor. They must briefly warm up approximately once a week—a process that Greene describes as “really challenging the body to the extreme, from zero to 100.”
These metabolic surges are incredibly stressful on the body, which may explain why the lemurs’ cells deploy telomere lengthening as a protective measure. The effect is temporary; two weeks after hibernation ended, the lemurs’ telomeres returned to their pre-hibernation length.
Interestingly, humans have shown similar telomere lengthening in extreme situations. Researchers have observed the phenomenon in astronauts spending a year aboard the International Space Station and in people living underwater for months.
The cellular rejuvenation seems to confer longevity benefits. While similar-sized non-hibernating primates like galagos typically live around 12 or 13 years, fat-tailed dwarf lemurs have been recorded surviving to nearly 30—about twice as long.
“Longevity and telomere repair may be linked, but we don’t know for sure yet,” Blanco cautioned.
The study revealed that lemurs experiencing deeper hibernation states showed the most significant telomere lengthening, while those that frequently “woke up” to eat maintained relatively stable telomere lengths.
This research arrives at a time when human longevity research is booming, with billions being invested in understanding and potentially slowing the aging process. The humble dwarf lemur may provide valuable insights, despite being an endangered species that’s rarely studied.
The mechanisms behind this cellular time travel remain unclear. By extending their telomeres, lemurs may effectively increase the number of times their cells can divide, adding new life to their cells during stressful periods.
Understanding how these small primates naturally extend their telomeres could potentially help researchers develop new approaches to prevent or treat age-related diseases in humans—ideally without increasing cancer risks associated with uncontrolled cell division.
As humans continue searching for ways to extend healthy lifespans, these drowsy distant cousins from Madagascar may have already evolved one answer: sometimes, to live longer, you need to slow down dramatically.
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