Death is an evolved trait, but it has to do with life history trade-offs, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_history_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lif

Death is an evolved trait, but it has to do with life history trade-offs, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_history_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_history_theory In some cases life history trade-offs differ between the sexes leading to longevity differences. In general, females live longer than males, although in humans the difference is pretty small. There are some extreme examples of this in spiders, such as the tarantula, where the male lives about 2 years and the female 8.