From the archives: Living forever

My first question would be how could you tell? But it appears the mole rat doesn't suffer from dementia, menopause and bone density loss until very near to its death. It's sobering to discover that in humans, your bones start get rickety in your early 30s.

As you would imagine, lots of labs around the world have been looking into the humble rodent. Not one of them has ever reported a mole rat getting cancer.

A study by the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio shows that this hardiness could be down to proteins equipped to raise the alarm if detecting any damaged brethren.

The damaged proteins are then, like in other animals, recycled by the body. But the not-at-all-modest mole rate does it a lot better than most. This allows the critter to happily go about its life without the burden of crippled proteins weighing it down.

So not quite Highlander, but if docs can harness this ability I'll be first in the queue to try it out.

Weird Science Factoid: By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.