Why do living beings die? Why don’t we continue to grow for the rest of our lives?

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Title. Why do our bodies stop growing at one point and begin to decline in function? If the purpose of life is to live and reproduce, wouldn’t it make more sense to continually evolve and live forever? Also don’t our cells constantly regenerate? So if they do then why do they start to die out?

In: Biology

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Without age and death, then parents compete with children for resources, which leads to lower success rate in offspring compared to parents. (imagine trying to compete against parents and grandparents who have experience and skills but no age detriments)

Evolution works on a generational level — meaning that it works over many generations, so the more successful the offspring are to reproduce, the greater the inclination of evolution.

Put these together, and we have “aging correlates to evolution.”

Then, we look at the organisms which don’t age to death, and they tend to be simple and unevolved (eg single-celled organisms, jellyfish, lobster, sea urchin).

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