Technology Network introduces us to a new theory about why elephants rarely develop cancers. As a general statement, larger animals are more likely to get cancer because mutations inevitably appear with more cell divisions. Yet elephants, despite being the largest land mammals, are almost immune.
You may have noticed that human testicles are usually inside a scrotum, which hangs outside of the body mass of a man and thus have some distance from body heat. As a consequence, sperm cells are produced at a lower temperature than normal human body heat. This is essential for high sperm production.
But elephant testicles are ascrotal, which is to say that they are kept inside the body and produce sperm at the same temperature as the rest of the body. These are testicles that can stay productive even under that kind of pressure.
Elephants, unlike any other known animal, have twenty copies of the TP53 cancer-fighting gene. Researcher Fritz Vollrath of the University of Oxford hypothesizes that elephants' hot testicles may be responsible for the high production of this gene.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Megan Coughlin