alt Hacker NewsMy guess is that this is half the story. It seems like there would be some advantage to some creatures of not aging, or having individuals who have significant longer life spans.
This is common in evolutionary algorithms anyway so it's notable we don't see it in nature, at least not in the form of extended lifespan perhaps measured by average lifetime heart beats. It's easy to imagine a world where nature might want to keep the alpha lion around longer than the others so it can have more offspring, for example.
>It seems like there would be some advantage to some creatures of not aging, or having individuals who have significant longer life spans.
There is, if there were no advantage a whole lot more species would die immediately after reproduction like the octopus.
Many simpler organisms are vaguely immortal.
>It's easy to imagine a world where nature might want to keep the alpha lion around longer than the others so it can have more offspring, for example.
The utility of genetic diversity puts a lot of pressure against this.