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The findings, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, add to growing evidence that staying socially and culturally active could play an important role in healthy aging.

Cultural Activities and Biological Aging

Everyone grows older, but the rate at which the body ages can vary from person to person. Physiological age reflects how well the body is functioning and may differ from chronological age, which is simply the number of years someone has lived.

Previous research has linked cultural activities, such as going to the movies, museums, and live performances, with better health and well-being in older adults. However, relatively few studies have explored whether these activities are connected to physiological aging itself.

Researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo in Japan say they have carried out the first longitudinal study to examine this relationship while accounting for unmeasured factors that remain stable over time.

How the Study Measured Aging

The team analyzed data from 1,899 adults participating in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, an ongoing population-based study of a nationally representative sample of adults aged 50 and older living in England.

Participants contributed data during at least two survey waves conducted in 2004/2005, 2006/2007, or 2008/2009.

To estimate physiological age, nurses measured 10 indicators of physical health, including pulse pressure, diastolic blood pressure, forced expiratory volume, hemoglobin concentration, fibrinogen, glycated hemoglobin, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, body mass index (BMI), grip strength, and walking speed. These measurements were combined into a single physiological age score.

Participants also reported how often they attended (a) the cinema, (b) a museum or art gallery, and (c) a theater, concert, or the opera. Each activity was scored on a scale from 0 (never) to 5 (twice a month or more), producing a total cultural engagement score ranging from 0 to 15.

Higher Cultural Engagement Linked to Younger Bodies

People with higher levels of cultural engagement, defined as taking part in cultural activities at least every few months, had an average physiological age of 66.9 years. In comparison, those with lower levels of participation had an average physiological age of 69.9 years, a difference of about three years.

Participants with higher cultural engagement were also more likely to be women, have higher socioeconomic status, be employed, and already enjoy better overall health.

After adjusting for factors such as household income, employment, and chronic health conditions, the researchers found that each one-point increase in cultural engagement score was associated with a 0.085-year (31-day) reduction in physiological age.

Why Cultural Activities Might Matter

The researchers suggest several possible explanations for the association. Cultural activities can strengthen social connections, encourage healthier lifestyle habits, and support better mental health, all of which may contribute to slower physiological aging.

Because the research was observational, it cannot determine whether cultural activities directly slow aging. The authors also note that reverse causation is possible, meaning healthier people may simply be more able to attend cultural events.

Even so, they argue that cultural engagement is a modifiable behavior that could become an effective public health strategy. "Notably, the impact can be comparable to frequent physical activity," they write.

The researchers also say that making cultural events more geographically and financially accessible could allow more people to participate.

Additional research will be needed to determine whether encouraging greater cultural engagement leads to lasting improvements in health and healthier aging over the long term. %!s()

The co-main event is special as it features the return of American wrestling great and combat sports legend, Ben Askren. Let's talk RAF.

Key Facts at a Glance

• Event: RAF 11: Tsarukyan vs. Covington
• Date: Saturday, July 18, 2026
• Location: UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Start time: 8 p.m. ET
• How to watch: FOX Nation (exclusive stream)
• Main event: Arman Tsarukyan vs. Colby Covington for the inaugural RAF Crossover Championship
• Co-main: Ben Askren vs. Belal Muhammad, Askren's return on his 42nd birthday

When And Where Is RAF 11?

RAF 11 runs Saturday, July 18, 2026, from UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena in Milwaukee. The main card starts at 8 p.m. ET.

The promotion is riding real momentum into the date. Its first international card, RAF Georgia, ran a week earlier in Tbilisi, and Milwaukee is the follow-up on home soil.

MORE FOR YOU

How Can You Watch RAF 11?

RAF 11 streams exclusively on FOX Nation, which is the official broadcast home for the promotion's flagship events. Coverage begins at 8 p.m. ET.

There is no traditional pay-per-view or cable window for the main card. FOX Nation is the one place to find it live.

Who Is On The RAF 11 Card?

The full RAF 11 lineup blends freestyle wrestling standouts with a heavy dose of MMA names. Here is the main slate:

• Arman Tsarukyan vs. Colby Covington, inaugural RAF Crossover Championship
• Ben Askren vs. Belal Muhammad
• Lucia Yepez vs. Felicity Taylor, championship
• Ben Davino vs. Arsen Harutyunyan, championship
• Frankie Edgar vs. Clay Guida
• Trent Hidlay vs. Magomedkhan Magomedov
• Skylar Grote vs. Adeline Gray
• Keegan O'Toole vs. Christopher Minto
• Anthony Cassioppi vs. Mostafa Elders

That Edgar-Guida bout puts two former UFC lightweights on the same mat, part of a pipeline of Octagon names RAF has been pulling in since Khamzat Chimaev competed outside the UFC earlier this year.

I spoke to Guida about his participation with RAF. He’s wanted this match with Edgar for a while.

What's At Stake In Tsarukyan vs. Covington?

The main event carries the first RAF Crossover Championship, a new belt built for combat sports athletes crossing onto the wrestling mat. Tsarukyan enters a perfect 6-0 in RAF. Covington is 3-0 since leaving the UFC earlier this year.

Covington told me in a recent interview that the bad blood with Tsarukyan is not a promotional angle.

"It’s all real. There's no fakeness about it," he said, before calling Tsarukyan a "spoiled, entitled little brat" and pointing to the incident where Tsarukyan threw Urijah Faber off the mat. He framed the match as six minutes "to make my life fair."

Interestingly, Askren, who competes on the same card, has publicly picked Tsarukyan by a single point.

What Does Ben Askren's Return Mean?

Askren's co-main is the story of the night for a lot of fans. A year ago he was in a hospital bed after a double lung transplant, unable to stand on his own. Now he wrestles Belal Muhammad, a recent UFC welterweight champion, on his 42nd birthday.

He picked a live opponent on purpose. Askren told me he has no interest in a soft return, and he was honest about where his body is after everything. "Most people thought I'd never be here at all," he said, adding that he is "not what I was" but has “made a lot of progress.”

Win or lose, a competitive wrestling match on the anniversary of the fight that nearly killed him is the kind of moment that outlives the result. %!s()

Now, a Frontiers in Audiology and Otology study has found why bone-conduction hearing works so well for elephants: It may all come down to size and a special muscle.

"Ear canal listening devices such as AirPods can be annoying because we hear body-generated sounds louder than normal, for example, when we walk or chew," said senior author Dr. Sunil Puria, an associate professor at the Department of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Eye and Ear. "Elephants, however, may use the ability to close their ear canals to their advantage in long-distance communication. We found that elephants' bone-conduction hearing is significantly improved through their larger middle ear structures and possibly further enhanced by voluntarily closing the ear canal."

Vibrating bones

For the study, published in the journal's Auditory Science section, the scientists used temporal bones, a part of the skull that houses the middle and inner ear. Samples came from deceased elephants and human donors. The team attached the temporal bones to a device that creates vibrations mimicking sound traveling through the body into the skull. By shining a laser beam, it measured how much tiny reflective markers placed on the middle ear bones moved in response to vibrations generated by low- and high-frequency stimulation. The ear canal was closed with a soft foam plug for the experiment.

Elephant middle ear bones vibrated most effectively at a frequency of about 400 Hz, whereas human bones did so at around 1.2 kHz. Below these frequencies, elephants' stapes, a small middle-ear bone that transmits vibrations to the inner ear, moved three to four times more than human stapes. Greater movement doesn't equal better hearing ability, but it means more vibrations are transmitted to the cochlea—the part of the ear where vibrations from sound waves are translated into neural signals.

Previous studies showed that elephants have better sensitivity to low-frequency hearing through air conduction, so it stands to reason that they would also hear low-frequency bone-conducted sounds better than humans, the team said.

"Although we suspected as much based on their behavior in the wild and responses to vibrational stimuli, it was very gratifying to show that elephants have excellent bone-conduction hearing," said first author Dr. Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell, formerly an instructor in the Department of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School.

Sharp ears

The reason for elephants' greater sensitivity to low-frequency sounds is likely anatomical. Their middle ear bones are nine times heavier and their eardrums seven times larger than those of humans. In most mammals, organ size scales with body size. This means an elephant's middle ear isn't specialized in its structure compared with a human's—it's just bigger.

"Because of their ear size, elephants can better transmit lower-frequency sounds to the cochlea. The specialization comes from the cochlea adapting to this greater input and generating neural responses that the brain can use and interpret for communication," explained Puria.

Elephants' ability to voluntarily close their ear canals—a capacity humans lack—could further improve their excellent low-frequency hearing. The authors hypothesized that when listening to low frequencies of around 200 Hz or lower, elephants may contract a muscle that closes the ear canal, achieving an effect similar to that of humans inserting earplugs or in-ear headphones.

"Elephants produce infrasonic vocalizations in the frequency range of 10–20 Hz," O'Connell-Rodwell explained.

"Based on our estimates, elephants' ability to close their ear canals could enhance their bone-conduction hearing by up to 30 times when listening to these infrasonic frequencies," Puria elaborated. "However, the exact improvement in sensitivity would depend on the extent to which the ear canal volume is blocked by the muscle."

This study opens avenues for further research in this intriguing field. For their experiments, the cochlea had been drained of fluids because of a lengthy procurement and preparation process, which may have led to an underestimation of the reported results, the team pointed out. Elephant tissue is scarce to obtain, which is why the number of samples available was limited.

"There are few creatures more majestic than elephants," concluded Puria. "Their behavioral characteristics might be better understood through their hearing capabilities. We need better data about their absolute hearing sensitivity across frequencies with air- and bone-conduction stimulation. We have tried this and found that it is easier said than done."

More information

Bone-Conduction Hearing in Elephants and Humans: A Middle-Ear Comparative Study, Frontiers in Audiology and Otology (2026). DOI: 10.3389/fauot.2026.1744613

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Citation: Elephants turn footsteps into messages through ground and skull vibrations (2026, July 15) retrieved 17 July 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-07-elephants-footsteps-messages-ground-skull.html

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A Deadly Fungus That Targets Adult Amphibians

The chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has caused catastrophic declines in amphibian populations across the globe. The fungus is responsible for chytridiomycosis, a disease that damages the skin of frogs and toads and disrupts their ability to regulate water, salts, and minerals.

Young amphibians are largely protected because tadpoles and larvae lack the keratin rich skin that Bd feeds on. Once they transform into adults and their skin becomes keratinized, they become vulnerable to infection, often leading to mass die offs.

To better understand why some populations recover while others continue to collapse, researchers studied common midwife toads living around four lakes in the Pyrenees of France and Spain that had all experienced severe Bd outbreaks.

At one lake, the toad population was still declining and had nearly disappeared. At the other three lakes, however, the populations had rebounded even though the fungus remained present in the environment.

Early Immune Defenses Make the Difference

The team focused on antimicrobial peptides, which are natural chemicals released from amphibian skin that serve as an important part of their immune system.

They discovered that toads from the recovering populations developed these protective peptides much earlier, while they were still tadpoles. By the time they reached adulthood and became susceptible to Bd, their immune defenses were already well established.

In contrast, toads from the struggling population produced far fewer of these protective peptides during the tadpole stage, leaving them less prepared once they matured.

Lead author Dr. Phillip Jervis, of UCL Chemistry, ZSL Institute of Zoology and Imperial College London, said: "Our study shows species that have declined heavily from this disease can still recover. They have the tools to fight off infection -- it just depends on timing. The disease kills toads and frogs as they turn from tadpoles to adults. Getting mature immunity at the tadpole stage helps these toads survive and the population to continue."

Dr. Jervis added: "The next step is to look at what factors prevent these immune systems from maturing early. This could be down to genetics or environmental factors such as temperature or the presence of trout -- a major danger for tadpoles that could drive them to develop into adults faster so they can leave the water, meaning less time for their immune system to develop."

More Than 1,100 Hidden Immune Peptides Discovered

To investigate the toads' chemical defenses, the researchers used mass spectrometry to examine the mixture of peptides (short chains of amino acids) released from their skin.

The analysis revealed a much larger collection of immune peptides than scientists had anticipated. Of the 1,152 peptides identified, only seven had previously been documented.

The study also found that tadpoles producing a wider variety of peptides (i.e., their defenses had matured prior to becoming toads) were much more likely to survive despite ongoing Bd outbreaks. Populations with fewer peptides during the tadpole stage continued to suffer high death rates.

Findings Could Inspire Future Medicines

Senior author Professor Alethea Tabor (UCL Chemistry) said: "We discovered a far greater diversity of peptides than we expected. We now need to understand how they work to control pathogens and which ones are anti-microbial.

"A lot of medicines for humans were initially found in the natural world -- penicillin came from fungi, for example. So these peptides are new leads that could be used to help human health, especially as we have our own problems as a species with the rise of antimicrobial resistance, which is requiring us to find new ways to treat infections."

Mass spectrometry allows scientists to measure the mass of molecules with exceptional precision. In this study, researchers used tandem mass spectrometry at UCL Chemistry to break peptides into smaller fragments, measure those fragments, and reconstruct each peptide's structure. This process enabled the team to identify and sequence hundreds of previously unknown molecules.

Co-author Dr. Kersti Karu (UCL Chemistry) said: "The ability to analyze hundreds to thousands of molecules in parallel has only emerged over the past decade. This approach is more commonly applied in human health research, for example to distinguish cancer cells from normal tissue, but is increasingly being extended to other areas of biological investigation."

The research was funded by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Leverhulme Trust. %!s()