[extropy-chat] Bowhead Whales May be the World's Oldest Mammals

[Damien Broderick]

At 05:00 AM 3/27/2007 -0400, Robert wrote:

>Longevity evolves along various vectors given the minimization of 
>the external hazard function which seems associated with in a shift 
>from R-selection to K-selection.

Do marine and aerial critters suffer to the same extent as land 
beasties from infection by microorganisms? I know nothing at all 
about this, but it occurs to me that disease vectors might be far 
more ubiquitous in oceans, since there'd be fewer "natural barriers" 
such as mountains and other land interruptions to easy migration. I 
wonder if whales that spend their lives moving vast distances north 
and south might have already developed early immunity to many 
diseases that might clobber more territorial and hence immuno-naive 
animals. Or am I talking through my hat?

Damien Broderick