4 ms·

I'm confused... How does aging speed up the evolutionary process?

• andromeduck 6y ago
  By reducing cycle time and resource competition between generations.
  • gumby 6y ago
    And the unusual factor that certain species adopted an intergenerational social system (which makes longer lifespan slightly more advantageous). Thus we have some species nurturing their young (most mammals, marsupials, and birds) as opposed to spawning them and then going on to other things (e.g. fish, insects). The most extreme case of this is humans: females live well beyond their fertile age and, effectively, so do men (while technically fertile in their 70s, the offspring are not as vigorous, in the evolutionary sense, as those conceived when the father was in his 20s). It is believed that this is because older humans have learned lots of things that can be useful in keeping kids alive and effective until they can propagate their genes. Although 99+% of evolutionary psychology is utter bullshit this is nonetheless fascinating.