Elephants have no natural predators and don't get cancer, but why does no elephant live to die of natural old age?
Due to the very large size of elephants, it can be said that in the tens of millions of years since the emergence of elephants, except for human beings, they have never had other natural enemies in nature.
Scientists have found that in humans and animals, there exists a gene called P53, which can repair DNA mutations and inhibit the occurrence of cancer, so it is also known as an oncogene.
In humans, there is only one copy of the P53 gene, and once it goes wrong, humans are prone to cancer.
In elephants, there are 20 copies of the P53 gene, and even if a few of them have problems, the other P53s are still able to work normally.
Therefore, theoretically speaking, the probability of an elephant developing cancer is very, very low.
In practical terms, no elephant has ever gotten cancer.
Because they have no natural predators and don't get cancer, elephants have a long average lifespan, almost as long as modern humans.
In the wild, elephants live to be 60 to 80 years old on average. In captivity, elephants can live up to 100 years.
Strangely enough, with such a long lifespan, no elephant has ever lived to die of natural old age.
It turns out that the elephant's fatal flaw lies in its teeth.
The "tusks" in this context do not refer to the elephant's long tusks but to the molars in its mouth.
Elephants are born with four molars, and when they are about two years old, these four molars will fall out, and then new molars will grow.
Throughout an elephant's life, a total of six sets of molars will grow.
An elephant's sixth set of molars will come in when it is about 30 years old, and this set of molars will accompany it through the second half of its life.
The first five sets of molars are rounded and flat, but the sixth set is sharp.
After the sixth set of molars has grown in, an elephant's molars will wear out quickly if it chews hard foods such as bark, nuts, and thorns for a long time.
When the sixth set of molars is worn out, the elephant can no longer chew food, and then it will be starved to death.
So, in nature, elephants, whose physiology is far from deceased, are often starved to death because their molars are worn out.
The elephant has a strong sense of impending death. When it senses that it is dying, it will quietly leave the herd and go to a lonely place to wait for the death knell to ring.
This "lonely place" is often referred to as the "elephant graveyard".
Needless to say, this is a really sad thing.
