Puzzling out elephant longevity

As readers of this blog know, I love weird animal science. Hummingbirds who don’t get diabetes; turtles who survive the winter underwater; obese, blind long-lived cavefish; ants who voluntarily live a long time; all of them fascinate me.There’s a risk, though, of these weird animal science stories turning into “just so” stories. We have a certain set of what seem to be effects, like hummingbirds who can eat copious amounts of sugar without getting diabetes, and what seem to be causes, like certa...