The change in metabolism, brain to body ratio, environment, and many unknown factors makes different lifespan for different species. Some animals live for hundreds of years like Bowhead Whales and Eels. At the same time, the lifetime of some other species of animals limited to only a few hours. Here the list of 10 shortest lifespan creatures in the world.
Pet Rabbits
The Rabbit, much loved by the kids as pets. But exactly an animal that lives for a maximum of 5 years. Fact, the common rabbit too may only have a short lifespan but the species ensure their survival by breeding excessively, this keeps the population count up and steadily increasing.
Small Rodents
The Rodent’s looks petty but have an extremely short lifespan.it is also similar as rabbit an average lifespan between 2 – 4 years. The rodents are also called as Hamsters make having excessive breeding. Hamsters can reach sexual maturity as young as 1 month old and can give birth multiple times a year.
Gerbils
Gerbils have a very short lifespan which isn’t helped by the fact that they are classed as pests and are constantly exterminated by humans. With a maximum lifespan of around 3 years the common house gerbils breed with great efficiency with females being able to breed once or twice a month, bearing anywhere between 4 – 10 young in each birth.
Mosquito Fish
The palm sized Mosquito Fish is a master of endurance found in the Gulf of Mexico, Gambusia. On top of birthing live young the Mosquito Fish can also give birth multiple times per mating season and each time have to between 50 & 100 young, they can also survive in worse conditions than other fish which adds to their continued survival as a species.
Leopard’s Chameleon
Chameleon is a fairly recent discovery found in on the island of Madagascar. These unique chameleons only have a life cycle of 1 year which makes it one of the shorter living ‘larger’ creatures on this list. Every year, mating occurs and before the young are born again in November the entire adult population of these unique chameleons dies off.
Dragonfly
The strange thing about Dragonflies is that they can take forever to emerge from the pupil stage, which essentially signs their death warrant. Dragonflies can be dazzling in beauty and as such are popular inspirations for art and tattoos however this doesn’t do anything to help with their small lifespan of around 4 months, especially after they could have spent anywhere up to 5 years waiting to emerge from the pupil stage.
Bees
Only lifespans for bees are 4 or 5 weeks. If you had to spend all of your life working on the hive I’m sure you would be pretty protective of your life’s work and the bee is no different. The downside to this of course is that if the bee does try to protect the hive by stinging a dangerous animal or predator then the bee will die as when its stinger detaches the gaping wound where the stinger was is always fatal to the bee.
Drone Ants
The Drone Ant has a very short lifespan of around 2. There is no life of endless work for this creature, the job of the Drone Ant literally entails eating and breeding. Is this life anybody likes? Never for this life better don’t want to born.
Gastrotrichs
We thinking 2 weeks are so less but here only 3 days! Yup, The Gastrotrichs may not look like much but they are indeed a living creature. The Gastrotrich’s life is made up of floating on water currents and occasionally eating, 3 days of this and it probably dies from boredom.
Mayflies
The number one creature with the shortest life is the Mayfly, who is lucky to achieve a lifespan of just 24hrs. That too not sure if it had some troubles. The Mayfly is no different, however that literally is all it does with its life. The Mayfly’s life can be as short as 30 minutes depending on the species and after hatching they mate, lay eggs and die.
