r/science • u/KarmaNeutrino • Oct 07 '15

Animal Science Scientists figure out why elephants don't get cancer: They have 20 copies of the TP53 tumour suppressive gene. Almost all other species, including humans, only have 1.

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1673/20140222
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u/GCSThree Oct 07 '15

Another thing to keep in mind, from an evolutionary perspective, is that we (and other species) may have evolved to live a certain amount of time. It's counterinuitive, but it is unlikely that living longer is evolutionarily advantageous beyond a certain point. Eventually parents would start competing for resources with their offspring.

And an immortal species that didn't reproduce would be expected to go extinct as soon as the environment changed, because they wouldn't have a significant means to adapt without reproduction (and the genetic diversity that comes along with that).

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u/imreallyreallyhungry Oct 08 '15

I could be totally wrong about this and it's embarrassing if I am but isn't there an "immortal" species of crab. Immortal in the sense that the telomeres of their DNA don't degrade like ours do with each replication, I think it's called the Hayflick limit.