Humans are constantly looking for ways to live longer – and experts say we may not need to look far.

Your glutes, the largest muscle in the human body, help support the body, keep you moving forward and help you look good in selfies.

But experts say they’re also crucial indicators of our health, including the impacts of disease or an inactive lifestyle.

“Glutes are so important” for independent living, Theresa Marko, an adjunct professor of physical therapy at Touro University, told The New York Times on Wednesday.

“Do you want to get off the subway? Do you want to get off the toilet?”

Stronger and longer

Researchers have long known that building muscle can help us live longer.

Just one hour of strength training a week has been shown to increase life expectancy by 17 percent, according to the non-profit AARP.

Part of it has to do with impacts from aging. The average 30-year-old will lose about a quarter of their muscle strength by age 70 and half by age 90, according to Harvard Health.

“Muscle mass really is the key to longevity. It really is our insurance policy for how long we want to stay functional,” Elaina Manolis, an assistant clinical professor of physical therapy, human movement and rehabilitation sciences at Northeastern University, explained in a statement.

“To live a long and healthy life, you want to be as functional and independent as possible, and that’s going to depend on how well you move.”

No butts about it

The glutes – including the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus – are that vehicle for movement and the foundation to keep everything else happy and working well.

They help to prevent injuries and pain, stabilize the hips and pelvis, protect the spine from undue stress and provide shock absorption when you’re walking or running, researchers say.

Past research shows that stronger glutes protect older adults from falling.

“Strong gluteals are important for proper pelvic alignment, propulsion during walking and running and even standing on one leg,” Amy Koch, a physical therapist at Nebraska Methodist Health System, said. “Gluteals also help support the lower back during lifting, and help prevent knee injuries.”

And the benefits may not just be physical: there’s even some evidence that how strong your glutes are is linked to brain health as we age.

“Stronger leg muscles act as pumps that drive cerebral circulation during routine walking, delivering more oxygen and nutrients to your neurons. Muscular activity improves insulin sensitivity, increasing cell energy and reducing inflammation,” Dr. Chris Renna, founder of LifeSpan Medicine, previously told Vogue.

Squat for your life

Americans spend an average of up to eight hours a day sitting, leading to what experts call “dead butt syndrome.”

Dead butt syndrome occurs due to muscle weakness, creating a “dead” feeling in your butt.

“There’s a real snowball effect when that weakness builds,” says Dr. Andrew Bang, a chiropractor with the Cleveland Clinic, said. “While dead butt syndrome may be a funny term, it can grow into some serious health issues that affect your ability to move.”

There are ways to prevent dead butt syndrome, including sitting up straight, keeping your feet flat on the floor, avoiding crossing your legs and frequently shifting in your seat.

But you’re still overloading some muscles – the hamstrings and neck – and not working your glutes, core and supportive muscles. That can even make it difficult to get up out of your seat.

“Sitting for most of the workday, an average of eight hours, raises your mortality risk, meaning you have a higher chance of dying earlier than expected,” Dr. Callie M. Davies, a sports medicine physician at the Mayo Clinic, said.

So, move it or lose it!

Practicing glute bridges, squats, hip thrusts, deadlifts and other targeted exercises can help to build your butt muscle. So can using a stairmaster, climbing stairs or going on a run.

You don’t even need to do that much!

The International Sports Sciences Association recommends doing a set of 6-12 repetitions with heavy resistance when using weights to build muscle.

“What they need to do is mimic movement patterns that we would see in everyday life,” Sandor Dorgo, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told The NYT.

Scientists have found more evidence that our furry friends have been our companions for thousands of years.

Researchers believe dogs descended from an ancient population of gray wolves somewhere in Europe or Asia.

Tens of thousands of years ago, those wolves got used to living with people and became less aggressive. As they became domesticated, their genes shifted along with their behavior, giving rise to the pups we know today.

But exactly when and where this happened remains a mystery.

Scientists are studying bits of DNA found in ancient dog and wolf remains to figure out what the earliest dogs may have looked like and where they came from.

In two separate studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers pushed the timeline back. They established a new way to study ancient canine DNA — which is often contaminated and tough to extract — by isolating just the doggy bits.

They examined ancient genes from the remains of over 200 dogs and wolves. The oldest dated back to about 15,800 years ago, moving the origin of dogs back by at least 5,000 years.

“This unique relationship between people and dogs has existed for such a long time and is continuing on today,” said University of Michigan dog genomics expert Jeffrey Kidd, who was not involved with the new research.

The genes showed that dogs were already spread out across Western Europe and Asia 14,200 years ago, at a time before agriculture and farming. These dogs lived with hunter-gatherer humans who were constantly on the move.

The dawn of agriculture — a major shift in human history — brought new people to Europe from southwest Asia. They mixed and mingled with Europeans, leaving a lasting and varied imprint on their genes.

But the dog genes studied by the scientists, stretching from the United Kingdom all the way to Turkey, stayed more consistent. They were less impacted by the arrival of new humans during the development of agriculture, and more by interactions between different hunter-gatherer groups and their dogs thousands of years before.

That’s different from dogs in Asia and the Americas, whose genes more closely reflect the movement patterns of their owners.

Scientists don’t know exactly what the first dogs looked like, but they have some ideas.

“We’re suspecting they would have resembled smaller wolves,” said study co-author Lachie Scarsbrook with the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

It’s also not clear how these ancient dogs lived alongside their humans. They could have stood guard or helped them hunt, but probably also played with young children.

There’s still more work to go to pinpoint exactly when dogs emerged — the first few pages of a storied relationship that’s still going strong.

“They are humanity’s best friend, alongside our societies for the last 16,000 years and will continue to in the future,” Scarsbrook said.