Why Do We Age?

In the first mini-lecture, we ask the question: why do we age? At first glance, it doesn’t seem like there is a clear answer. If we understand natural selection as a means of maximising lifetime fitness to produce more offspring, surely an individual that did not age would increase the population of a species much more than someone who did? Why also, do some organisms live longer than others, even between individuals of the same species? This first mini-lecture begins to tackle this question by understanding natural selection. We examine the three key components of natural selection that enable characteristics to evolve over time. To continue this, we learn about the term “Darwinian demons”: individuals that are long-lived or immortal, and consistently produce high-quality offspring. It is a term theorising the existence of species that do not follow Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, and we learn about some species in nature that could be “Darwinian demons”.