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`%` is one of the oldest Python syntaxes for interpolating strings. It basically works like:

```
template_string % data_tuple
```

In fact, you can literally do that:
```
>>> s = "%d %d"
>>> t = (1, 2)
>>> s % t
'1 2'
```

`template_string` is the template, `data_tuple` is the values to be used for rendering the template. Obviously they must match in number - if you have too few values in your tuple you'll get an error.

These days, there are much better ways to do the same thing and I would recommend avoiding `%`:

* `"A {} can live up to {} years".format(animal, age)"` - looks like a plain old function call, like `"HeLLo".lower()`.
* `f"A {animal} can live up to {age}"` ("f-string") - syntactic sugar to make the above call to `.format` easier.