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Nichole Sobecki

A yellow-winged bat rests in a biologist’s hand in Uganda. Eighteen of the 19 mammals that live proportionally longer than humans based on body size are bats. (The naked mole rat is the other.) Bats fascinate scientists because they carry deadly viruses but are not affected by them.

After samples and measurements are taken, ABRP staff place a tranquilised baboon in a covered holding cage to recover from the anesthaesia. The baboon—in this case, Dezmond—is then released back into the wild, usually within two to four hours.

Compared with humans, baboons offer researchers the ability to watch ageing play out over an entire lifetime. The maximum observed life span for females is 27 years and for males, 24 years. The average age at which a female that reaches adulthood is expected to die is about 18 years. The combination of observational data with genetics is revealing much about the ageing process.

To understand ageing, researchers look for clues in animals, such as those studied by the 51-year-old Amboseli Baboon Research Project (ABRP) in Kenya. As part of that work, Benard Oyath and Jackson Warutere prepare to take blood and other samples from Olduvai, who was tranquilised and then released back to the wild. The project’s scientists have found that baboons with strong social connections in adulthood can recover from harmful health effects of a stressful childhood.

A pyramid covers a tomb in Meroë, Sudan. Rulers of the Kingdom of Kush were buried here underneath the steeply pitched structures, which range in height from 30 to one hundred feet tall, far shorter than the pyramids in nearby Egypt.

A group of school children approach the pyramids at Meroë.

Volunteer tour guides show a group of Sudanese school children the Meröe pyramids. During the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir from 1989 to 2019, Sudan’s school curriculum was infused with Islamic ideology and much of its rich ancient history was glossed over, but the new government wants to change that.

Sudanese tourists visit Jebel Barkal, Sudan, to climb the small butte, which has been considered sacred for thousands of years. Roughly a dozen pyramids are also scattered around the base of the mountain.

The pyramids of Nuri, Sudan, were built between 650 and 300 B.C. The most famous tomb belongs to King Taharqa, the Black Pharaoh who conquered Egypt.

Archaeologist Gretchen Emma Zoeller excavates a burial site in Nuri. The ancient site sprawls across more than 170 acres along the Nile in northern Sudan.