Read the text below. Think of the word which best fits in the gap. You can only use one word in each gap.
The average life span
Life span, also known as life expectancy, is a statistical measure of the average amount of time a living being is expected to live.
Human life expectancy can be very different depending (1) _______________ where you were born and how wealthy your family is. Nowadays, it ranges (2) _______________ around 50 years in most African nations to almost 90 in Southern European countries and Japan.
Sadly, butterflies are among the organisms with the shortest life span. Some species only live (3) _______________ a day. However, some species of butterflies can live (4) _______________ to several months.
What would you say is the maximum lifespan for an animal? And which one would that be? Well, the honor belongs to the Greennland shark, which averages 300 hundred years but some specimens have lived over 500 years. They were alive when the Byzantine Empire (5) _______________ still a thing!
However, when it comes (6) _______________ life expectancy, no living being can beat trees. Some trees can grow (7) _______________ into their thousands, with Tjikko trees in Sweden holding the title of organism with the longest lifespan. Some of these trees are 10,000 years old. 10,000!!! They were already (8) _______________ the planet when our species was still living in caves.
