In nature, aging is a very luxurious behavior. Most animals cannot survive to aging, and they will die for various reasons. So what is going on?
Why do animals die when they lose their ability to mate?
The reason why animals die before they lose their ability to mate is actually the result of natural selection. Natural selection is not for longevity genes, but for genes with strong reproductive ability.
In Australia, there is a marsupial called the broad-footed shrew. When they reach their first estrus season of sexual maturity, males will seize every opportunity to mate with a female, even if their organs fail, even if they lose their hair and become blind. , even in death, they will not stop.
This happens because they have large amounts of male testosterone, a hormone that helps them be more masculine, but also damages their physical health, causing them to mate only once and die, while females have wide foot pockets. Shrews can live for several years.
It stands to reason that this male hormone will cause premature death and should be eliminated, but in fact, on the contrary, individuals who do not have this male hormone will be eliminated.
This is because testosterone can cause premature death, but it also helps in mating, allowing organisms to pass their genetic material to offspring, so offspring will carry the hormone in their bodies. On the other hand, because individuals with less male hormones are at a disadvantage in sexual competition, they cannot find a mate, let alone pass on their genetic information to their offspring, so they are the ones that are eliminated by natural selection.
That is to say, when natural selection selects genes, although it will select genes that are conducive to the survival of individual organisms, they will be more inclined to the latter than mating.
In addition, natural selection will deliberately kill individuals who have lost the ability to mate. For example, once the ability to mate is lost, the skills of the body will decline, which will lead to very easy predation by carnivores, or aging carnivores because of Can’t catch enough food and die.
For example, when the lion king has not lost the ability to mate, his physical function is not as good as that of the young male lion, which will cause them to be banned by the new lion king and eventually wander on the grassland.
lack of energy
The reason why individuals who have lost the ability to mate die is actually because the energy on earth is limited. And limited energy cannot supply unlimited biological needs.
Since energy cannot supply all biological needs, weeding out aging individuals helps the population continue. This is because aging individuals consume energy, and secondly, aging individuals do not have the ability to reproduce and cannot continue the population.
In fact, most organisms cannot survive to age, and may be eliminated by nature due to disease, poor physical fitness, or various reasons before that.
Summarize
The reason why organisms die after losing the ability to mate is because the body functions of the organisms will decline after losing the ability to mate, which makes them easy to be preyed by natural enemies, or die because they do not have enough energy for predation. For example, a lion can only survive for 10-15 years in the wild, but it can survive for about 20 years in an artificial breeding environment.
