Nagging question?

[Axon]

So this question has been nagging me for a while, as a fan of nature and animals documentary, I'm always baffled by the way they estimate animals ages in years, how it's done?. How do they estimate the age of let's say a dog. Also what's the method used in conversing this in terms of humans years. For instance they say animal A is X years old which is Y in human years.  Is there some equations of whatever that they don't mention them on the shows.


Does anyone know what are the scientific method of finding the age of animals and conversing this in terms of humans years?

[proxx]

Well I think this is based on a rough estimation that an average human will die at age 75 and a dog in say 25.
That makes 3 years for a dog one year for a human, I dont think there is hard science behind this at all.
In fact I would have to be adjusted every x years.

*edit*
Seems that I underesitmated it a bit but still my theory holds up pretty well.
http://www.calculatorcat.com/dogs/dog-years.phtml

Figuring out how old your dog is relative to human age isn't as simple as people think. A number of factors come into play. Wikipedia has an article on aging in dogs that discusses the subject.

The first factor is a dog's size and/or breed. For instance, a Bulldog's life expectancy is estimated to be around 7 years, and Great Dane lives to be 8.5 years on average. Compare that to a Miniature Poodle who's average lifespan is close to 15 years. So the breed makes an enormous difference in the number of years a dog will live.

Because we are comparing dog years to human years, we also have to consider the average life expectancy of humans. For instance, if we assume a certain breed of dog lives 10 years on average, and put that into the calculator, the result should be the maximum lifespan of a human. But human life expectancy varies, based on things like infant mortality, country, access to health care, gender, etc. Average lifespan worldwide is around 66 years. In developed countries, it is 80 years, and that is what the calculator above assumes.

As you can see, a truly accurate calculator could get cumbersome. So the dog years calculator above simply takes a middle-ground approach that is accepted as adequate by many people. For the first two years, a dog year is equal to 10.5 human years. After that, each dog year equals 4 human years. This calculation is based on studies that indicate dogs, except maybe larger breeds, develop more quickly in the first two years of life.

Here is a chart that shows the differences in aging depending on weight, which of course also represents different breeds of dogs:

[Kulverstukas]

It's not as simple as one may think. What they say on TV is shit, a comparison for simple minded people. And I hear that quite often, honestly.