4 ms·

That is because they stave to death when their sixth set of teeth wear out. To get cancer at anything similar to human rates elephants need to live longer.

• close04 7y ago
  They are also exposed to far less carcinogens. Half of cancers as far as I read on Wikipedia can be attributed to artificial factors like smoking, alcohol, diet triggered obesity, etc.
  • ivanhoe 7y ago
    It's always a combination of genetic predisposition and external effects working together (except, of course, in very rare cases of lethal-dose exposures to carcinogens). Usually external effects just increase the chances of mutations, and then fate and your genetics role the dice.
  • hevi_jos 7y ago
    Not to forget Chemicals like PVCs plasticizers, solvents like benzene in paints, bis-phenol A in plastic bottles, flame retardants in our home that we breathe whenever we sit down in something soft, insecticides(air in cities is super polluted of them) and diesel particles. Those things are extremely dangerous, but we have not natural sensors to detect and avoid exposure to them. I bought a geiger detector and it surprised me to find places with thousands of times more radiation than others.
    • ethbro 7y ago
      Don't put it near a banana...