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Studying Nature's secrets, and animals' medical superpowers
CBSN
At the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens, in Palm Desert, California, it's hard not to marvel at giraffes, with their towering height and gentle ways. But it turns out they may be medical marvels as well.
Physician and biomedical researcher Dr. Davis Agus notes that giraffes have a blood pressure of about 280 over 180, more than twice as high as that of a human. "When we, as humans, get elevated blood pressure, we start to have significant heart disease, stroke, kidney problems; that doesn't happen to a giraffe," he said.
Agus, the CEO of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine and a CBS News medical contributor, is also the author of "The Book of Animal Secrets," published by Simon & Schuster (a part of CBS' parent company, Paramount Global).