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Comment by Expez

There is no evolutionary pressure to increase the life-span of individual organisms, past a certain point.

To the contrary, there might be an evolutionary benefit in having your parents die off shortly after they've done all they can to increase your, and your siblings, chance of reproducing. The reason a timely death might increase the chance of the gene-line's survival is because the parent might otherwise consume scarce resources that are better invested in the offspring.

parent Expez 9 years ago

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