What's this super-aging butterfly’s longevity secret?

What if there were a great ape species that could live over 1,000 years? That’s basically Heliconius in the butterfly world. The insects live around 25 times longer than their butterfly cousins, and scientists think they have one clue as to why: pollen. But as Katie Wu https://www.theatlantic.com/author/katherine-j-wu/, a science writer at The Atlantic, explains, that’s not the whole story. She and host Nate Rott https://www.npr.org/people/348779465/nathan-rott also talk about how bats sip from the fountain of youth – and what it all may mean for humans. Read Katie's full story here https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/06/butterflies-longevity/687556/. If you liked this episode, check out our episode on a pill that could extend dogs’ lives http://lnk.to/i7246O…and maybe yours someday. Interested in more science about aging? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. It includes perks like bonus episodes, early access, archive access, curated playlists and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on. Because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at selc.org.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Short wavers, it's your boy Nate Rotten, the host here. Maybe it's because I'm turning 40 this year and I'm reminded of my mortality every time I pull my aching body out of bed. But man, there's a certain song from the 80s that's really been hidden.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Absolute banger. And then I recently learned about this butterfly that does live the butterfly equivalent of forever 25 times longer than other butterflies, which, you know, to be fair, normally lives only a few weeks.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  To put that in perspective, it would be like if we found another great ape out there that could survive for more than a millennium compared to our puny, like, I don't know, 75-ish years.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Katie Wu is a science journalist for The Atlantic. She's how I learned about this little guy. Because she recently wrote about this genus of long-lived butterflies called Heliconius for work.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  And they seem pretty ordinary at first glance. I mean, they're cute, they're colorful, they love to drink nectar, standard butterfly stuff. But then they just keep living and living and living and living, like for months at a time.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  How these butterflies defy aging? That's still somewhat of a mystery. Sorry, Fountain of Youth Seekers, but scientists do have a clue.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  They know their longevity has something to do with pollen, but how exactly they're making use of that pollen to extend their lifespans is still kind of a mystery.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Today on the show, studying a super aging butterfly. What scientists do and don't know about what causes their long lifespans and what lessons humans could take from it, including whether pollen is worth adding to your anti-aging regime, assuming you have one. You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  This message comes from ProLon with their five day fasting mimicking diet, a clinically developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Learn more at prolonlife.com/NPR. This message comes from Planet Visionaries. If you're looking for a dose of optimism, Planet Visionaries is the podcast you need. Host Alex Honnold sits down this season with extraordinary doers creating real climate action. It's a lineup that proves hope isn't naive, it's fuel for change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  This message comes from Edward Jones. Where they believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest, it's also about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Okay, Katie, other than the fact that these heliconious butterflies live so much longer than their butterfly cousins, like, why is their long lifespan so surprising?

• 3:44Speaker 02

  I'd say there are kind of two scary parts to this whole process of aging, right? It's like actually getting old and then actually stopping living. All things eventually stop living. I don't think we can avoid the death part of this equation. But I think the prospect of aging, like losing our physical and mental capabilities, deteriorating, looking wrinkly and gray, and our hair ending up in all the weird places, like, that is very unappealing to a lot of people. These butterflies not only live very long, but they spend their adult lives, like, still remaining extremely...

• 4:21Speaker 02

  vigorous and active and capable of producing offspring like functionally they are kind of going hard until their last day which is absolutely wild the researchers who have been looking into them will you know sometimes study captive populations of these butterflies and they'll see adult butterflies zooming around their cave gorging on nectar mating in the afternoon maybe laying some eggs and then come nightfall they just drop dead it's like oh guys I'm going to the gym thud it's just out of nowhere they seem to just stop.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  They're like literally living their best lives until the very end.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely and that really just defies our typical intuitive conceptions of aging and while these butterflies you know they do kind of fade in terms of coloration over time that's pretty much the only thing that scientists can see otherwise they're doing their most important evolutionary purposes right like they're nourishing their bodies they're mating they're producing offspring until they just don't.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  So scientists thought heliconias might be living longer because it was eating pollen. I gotta ask like how does a butterfly eat pollen like they don't even have mouths right?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  It's a great question and okay butterflies have mouths right but what they really really really fundamentally lack is you know really strong jaws and teeth the kind you might expect if you are dealing with pollen and I don't know how many you know of us humans really appreciate this we look at flowers and we're like oh this lovely like yellow powder it must be so soft and fluffy it's like eating cotton candy but no pollen is hardcore it's like these really coarse hard grains that you generally need to grind apart with something really tough like I mean maybe picture it's like granola for insects and

• 6:11Speaker 02

  right how do you manage that an adult butterfly has a proboscis it's basically this long straw because for most adult butterflies all you really need to do is sip nectar basically drink sugar water through a straw that comes out of your face and so scientists have actually been really puzzled by how heliconias butterflies manage to grind pollen down into a useful form. As far as they can tell, they'll collect the pollen on, you know, that straw-like structure, the proboscis, and kind of just move the proboscis around. Maybe they, you know, ooze out some saliva enzymes to help, you know, with the mechanical process of

• 6:53Speaker 02

  breaking it down. But it is still kind of a mystery. No matter what exactly happens in that process, though, they eventually slurp up whatever mixture they've made, and they're able to extract nutrients to the tune of living a lot longer than their close relatives.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  It's like drinking a boba tea, but, you know, being able to like smash up the boba somewhere in the straw along the way is what I'm thinking of.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  It truly is like drinking granola with a straw that is attached to your face.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Okay, so these butterflies are taking the time to find this pollen and grind it up. Do we know if that's what's causing them to live so much longer? That's just the leading theory?

• 7:34Speaker 02

  What is knowledge?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  I ask myself every day.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  I would say this is the leading idea, but the story is a little bit more complicated than that. It's not just like if you feed any animal or even any butterfly pollen, it's gonna all of a sudden live 25 times longer. Something about the heliconius body has, I guess, adapted them to being able to process this pollen. So for instance, if researchers give another type of butterfly some pollen, and they're able to even like grind it up for them, they don't actually live longer. It's not, you know, this magic elixir that can just impart longevity onto any given species. Something about the heliconius has allowed them to sort of evolve alongside this resource and give them access to it.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  And so when you deprive them of pollen, they live a little bit less long, but it's not like they revert back to a common butterfly that only lives a few weeks. They still live a little bit longer than their close relatives. It just sort of dampens their potential.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  So if I went outside and started licking flowers, it wouldn't extend my lifetime?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I mean, I can't really promise anything, but I will say, like, depending on which flower you lick, it could also kill you. So look at your own risk.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah. Well, live fast, die young, as the butterflies do. Or die old?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  I mean, but you've done a lot of reporting on this idea of longevity and you've reported on other animals that have long and healthy lifespans, namely bats. Like, what is their secret?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, bats are wild. And I am fascinated by bats because they seem to have a variety of strategies that help them live a lot longer than you would expect. And bats, you know, they are mammals, so more similar to us than these butterflies. And they sort of defy that rule that you were talking about earlier, right? You would expect them to be more like a mouse, you know, not live that long, have a ton of babies, die quickly. But a lot of bats can live for a really, really, really long time. And scientists think that, you know, there's a few things going on. One strategy seems to be that they were able to shut down their bodies to a really extreme degree during hibernation. It's like putting your body in deep freeze. And, you know, we humans can maybe relate to this if anyone has ever

• 9:56Speaker 02

  heard of the process of like cryogenically freezing someone. It's like we're trying to mimic that process, right? We grind our metabolism to a near halt. We lower our body temperature. Because part of the idea of aging is, you know, maybe it's just the accumulation of wear and tear on the body. So if we can slow down all the things that tend to accumulate damage in our bodies, maybe we just extend the lifespan of something a little longer. It's really a lot like just being really careful with your car, right? It's going to last you longer if you don't ding it up a bunch along the way.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Makes me wish I could like sleep harder, you know, like go into like a somewhat hibernative state.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Totally. And, you know, some of the other things that bats do are a little bit harder to mimic even with modern technology. But, you know, just the way that they sort of control their immune responses, they're less reactive, I'd say. They produce fewer of the inflammatory immune responses that can also create a lot of damage in the body. But that really is the name of the game for a lot of animals that live a long time. They're either able to stave off some of the damage that would typically kill a body as expected, or they're able to do a lot of extra repair in the body. So even if that damage builds up, they can take care of it really quickly in ways that human bodies can't.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  So anytime I hear about the idea of like animals, you know, nobody cheats death, but extending life.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  You know, humans have been obsessed with the idea of the fountain of youth for forever, right? What lessons do you think we can learn from these animal aging studies, you know, besides not going out and licking every flower for pollen?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a really interesting question and such a natural one. I admit that I probably don't have the most exciting answers for you. I mean, I wish I could tell you like, oh, my God, I just created this new pollen protein bar, and if you go out and buy it, we're all gonna live like an extra 100 years. It's not that simple. I think part of the lesson here is that it's not just that these animals have figured out like things in their environment or like day-to-day strategies to live longer. Like, oh, if I just hibernate, I'll live longer. If I use this pollen, I'll live longer. Their bodies have to be adapted to sort of make the most out of those strategies, right? Like bats evolved to be able to hibernate and shut their bodies down in ways that human bodies naturally can't.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Heliconia butterflies are able to extract nutrients from that pollen in ways that even close relative butterflies can't do. It's not just about the pollen. It's about how receptive the body is to the pollen or to the hibernation. And so I think it's a good lesson for humans because there's some humility in this, right? I'm not saying that we should give up on eating well or getting enough rest or taking care of our bodies in other ways. I think those things can help us live better, healthier lives and, you know, maybe even live longer than some other people who aren't practicing those good lifestyle habits. But there is a cap, right? A cap on how much impact that can have on a single lifespan.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  On a more encouraging note, human lifespans have really, really, really extended, even in the past couple centuries, right? When our babies stopped dying of, you know, terrible infectious diseases with the advent of antibiotics and vaccinations and better hygiene, we have extended the average human lifespan. And so it's not to say that technology and innovation and modern medicine haven't played a role in helping us live longer. But I think one thing that people often forget Is that the average lifespan has ticked up because we've cut down on a number of really young babies and kids that have died. There have been people living into their 80s for a very long time. And so we probably do have to acknowledge that there is, to some degree, an evolutionary

• 13:46Speaker 02

  cap. And I doubt that even with all of the super interesting hacks from medicine to diets to vaccines, all those things are good, but those alone are probably not going to all of a sudden add, you know, 50 years to the typical human lifespan at this point.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Katie, thank you so much for bringing us this reporting.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Of course, and I hope you and I both live exactly as long as we want to.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  To long, prosperous lives.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Short waivers, if you want to live forever, or if you just liked this episode, follow us on the NPR app or whichever app you like to use. This episode was produced by Burley McCoy, edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Tyler Jones. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keely. I'm Nate Rott. Thanks for listening to Short Wave from NPR. I wanna be forever young. Do you really wanna live forever, forever, forever?

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Mint Mobile. While others have been hiking your bill, Mint Mobile has kept their wireless plans starting at $15 a month. Switch to Mint Mobile and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month. Go to mintmobile.com/switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. New customer offer, first three months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. This message comes from EasyCater. Making it easy for organizations to order food for meetings and events from favorite restaurants, set up meal programs for their employees, and manage food spend all in one place at easycater.com.