Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1898 — The Age of Animals. [ARTICLE]

The Age of Animals.

Afi far as naturalists have been able to discover, the elephant lives to the greatest age of any of the animals with which we are familiar. It takes twen-ty-five to thirty years, and sometimes longer, for elephants to complete their growth. It is recorded that certain specified animals have lived more than one hundred and fifty years, but the statistics on subjects of this sort are necessarily incomplete, and therefore unreliable. The Hon is supposed to live forty years, although it is claimed that one kept in the Tower of London attained the age of seventy years. It is not supposed that he would have lived to that age in the natural condition. The horse is a short-lived animal, but when carefully kept and allowed to spend a great deal of its time in pasture it has been known to live past the age of forty years. The trouble with horses is that they are fed for hard work, consequently their feet and their digestion wear out. Eighteen to twen-ty-four years is a very high average for horses to attain. Cows live eighteen or twenty years, but they have very little value toward the latter portion of this period, save in exceptional cases.