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"We found that the small relationship between intelligence and life span was almost all genetic," said study researcher Rosalind Arden, a research associate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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Arden and her colleagues analyzed data from three long-running twin studies that all looked at sets of twins in which at least one twin had already died. One study looked at 377 pairs of male World War II-veteran twins from the United States. Another was a study of 246 pairs of twins from Sweden, and the third looked at 784 pairs of Danish twins.In general, the researchers found, the more intelligent twin of each pair lived longer, whether the twins were fraternal or identical. But there was a much larger difference in longevity between fraternal twins, pointing to genes as the major driver of the life-span differences.
Statistically, the researchers found, lifestyle choices could explain only 5 percent of the link between intelligence and life span. The rest was genetic.
Another interesting inference to draw from the identical twins in their study is that intelligence is not purely a question of genes. If one half of the pair can be more intelligent than the other, despite sharing identical genes, then that must come down to lifestyle choices, work, and will.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Friday August 14 2015, @04:10PM
http://www.darwinawards.com/ [darwinawards.com]
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Friday August 14 2015, @04:49PM
That's probably part of it. More importantly, brain development and maintenance is metabolically expensive and therefore highly dependant on good health. For example there's the recent study which showed that hospitalisation due to infection precedes a permanent decrease in IQ. (I'm sure it was covered here but I can't seem to master soylent's search function.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Friday August 14 2015, @07:18PM
Those Darwin Awards are as stupid as the people they "honor". The stupid people are all procreating like rabbits, while you're in your basement figuring out how the universe works.
Guess what? The idiots with twelve kids (who usually drink themselves to death when they're much younger than I am now) win the Darwin game, but since neither of my daughters has had kids yet, I'm a Darwin game loser so far.
What the study boils down to is that if you have good genes, you're going to be both smart and healthy -- that is, unless your mother was an alcoholic when she was pregnant, in which case your good genes aren't going to do you much good. There were a few such kids in my neighborhood when I was growing up, it was pretty pathetic.
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