Long life............. with lots of wives?

Hi,
Musing#18
"Polygamy can aid longevity"
The above catch line is the heading of a news item(TOI,21/8) I came across the other day. As per the details given there, Virpi Lummaa an ecologist and his associate at the university of Sheffield, U.K., has done research on the longevity of polygamous men spread across 140 countries and their finding is that polygamous men on an average lived 12% longer than monogamous ones.But in the case of women their longevity is directly proportional to the number of the grand children they have. The more longer they live, more are the chances of having grand children which further increases their life span. It appears that doting on and pampering the grand children aids their longevity. This they have labelled as the "grand mother effect". But the research did not reveal such "grand father effect" in the case of men, but fathering more kids with more wives leads to increased male longevity as per their research.
My immediate reaction to this was that this is yet another cranky research by a crazy scientist and I was about to trash it when another news item caught my eyes(TOI, dt.23/8) regarding one Mr.Abubakar from Nigeria who is 84 years old and has 86 wives and 170 children(no mention about grand children, may be he lost the count). In this case he has been admonished by the religious authority that as per their law he can have only 4 wives and hence he has to choose only 4 and relinquish the balance and also give his repentance, and if he fails to comply he will face the death penalty.
Two paradoxical things emerged out of this, one may be more wives ensured he became an octogenarian and still going strong and the other is that this may prove to be his nemesis also as if he doesn't comply to this diktat it may cut short his life also.
On a serious note if we really analyse what sustains any life, not just human alone,then only one common factor becomes crystal clear that it is all pervading LOVE.
It is not that with more wives one gets more LOVE. Many a men who had more wives have come to grief, take the case of King Dasarath who got only more misery and his life was cut short .It is not in the quantity but in the quality. Lots of monogamous men also have lived long when they were besotted with loving wives and children.
It has also been proved that people who were advised to keep a pet after recovering from serious illness recovered faster and lived a longer life. The pets Love and affection rejuvenates them. Lonely people who do gardening with lots of love,they also live longer as they can experience the response of the plants to their loving and nurturing care by their beautiful flowering and the fragrance they spread.
In fact we know that our mother earth is revolving around an axis, and that axis is nothing but the axis of LOVE. If the whole world becomes devoid of any LOVE, who knows even the Mother Earth will stop revolving and the whole world will come to a standstill.
That's why it is said,
God is Love and Love is God
mentor mohan