Why mammals that band together may face lower cancer risks
In cooperative societies – like elephants or whales – natural selection seems to favour genetic mechanisms that suppress cancer, study says
Much research on cancer prevalence has focused on genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors. But a new study by Argentine researchers offers a novel evolutionary perspective: the social structure of mammals may play a critical role in cancer risk.
The new angle has been proposed by researchers from the cancer philosophy and biology systems group at the University of Buenos Aires, led by Professor Matías Blaustein.
Their study, published on November 12 in the journal Science Advances, suggests that species characterised by strong social cooperation exhibit significantly lower cancer rates, while those shaped by intraspecific competition face higher risks.
There are disparities in cancer rates across human populations. According to the World Health Organization, the United States, with a population of 340 million, had one of the highest age-standardised cancer incidence rates in the world in 2022, at 376 cases per 100,000 people.
China, with a population of 1.4 billion, reported an incidence of 201.6 per 100,000, with both facing environmental challenges.
The interdisciplinary team led by Blaustein drew on extensive data sets – including records from more than 110,000 zoo animals across 190 species, tumour prevalence studies and comparisons of archetypal species such as cancer-resistant whales and more susceptible jaguars.
They integrated insights from mathematics, ecology, physics and molecular biology for the study titled “Coevolution of cooperative lifestyles and reduced cancer prevalence in mammals”.
They found that in cooperative societies – such as elephant herds or whale pods – older individuals played a vital role in guiding the group, such as leading migrations or teaching survival skills.
Because their survival benefited the whole community, natural selection appeared to favour genetic mechanisms that suppress cancer.
In contrast, in species marked by high intraspecific competition, the researchers observed a paradoxical phenomenon known as the “Hydra effect” – a concept borrowed from ecology where removing individuals, like cutting off a Hydra’s head, inadvertently increased population growth.
In this context, higher cancer mortality among older individuals could free up resources for younger ones, potentially allowing traits that predispose the species to cancer to persist across generations, according to the paper.
Notably, the study challenges long-standing assumptions – such as Peto’s paradox – that link larger body size or higher metabolism to greater cancer risk.
Elephants and whales, despite their massive size and long lifespans, have evolved powerful cancer defences: elephants carry 19 extra copies of the tumour-suppressor gene TP53, while certain whales have enhanced DNA repair mechanisms.
These traits, the researchers argue, are not random but have coevolved alongside cooperative social systems in which elder survival rates enhance group fitness.
Blaustein, a biologist, cancer researcher and philosopher, said he had harboured many questions about cancer for around a decade.
“Pathological conditions classified as cancer not only kill one of six people in the world, they are also widely distributed across the tree of life,” he said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post.
“We identified that species with a competitive lifestyle have higher cancer and cancer mortality rates than the cooperative species.
“We hypothesised that this could have a fitness-positive role as a programmed-obsolescence mechanism ... where the cancer activates at a certain age to allow population recycling and enable younger individuals to survive.”
Catalina Sierra, a biologist and principal author of the research article, said: “We used three large public data sets.
“The first one included information on more than 110,000 zoo animals, covering around 190 mammal species, from elephants and whales, which very rarely develop cancer, to cats or rodents, where cancer is much more common.
“The second data set measured how common tumours [neoplasia] are across a smaller group of species. The third data set focused on ‘archetypal’ species, those with extreme cancer rates,” she told the Post.
“For example, species like whales or elephants with very low incidence, versus species such as jaguars or Tasmanian devils, where cancer appears more often.”
Blaustein said some animals lived and moved in groups, such as buffalo.
“The more experienced individuals – the elders – are the ones who show the way to drinkable water or to places where food is more abundant. This benefits the whole herd. The cooperation, as life in a group, could favour the survival of these animals,” he said.
There were also differences depending on whether they lived or bred in groups or solitarily, he said.
“If a mother has only one offspring, it receives all the care, the love and dedication. On the contrary, bigger families have competition between offspring for feeding, with the consequence that the weaker frequently die,” he said.
The researchers analysed issues such as the timing of breeding stages, body size, maternal or paternal care during the breeding stages, differences between polytocous and monotocous species – having multiple offspring compared with single offspring – diet and lifestyle in relation to cancer prevalence and mortality rate.
“We carried out statistical analyses to look for links between cancer and different lifestyle or life-history traits,” Sierra said.
“Then, together with physicists and mathematicians, we built a population model that divides individuals into young, reproductive adults and older non-reproductive adults; the model considers resource availability and how cooperative or competitive individuals are.
“This allowed us to simulate different scenarios and see in which conditions mortality among older adults [which in the model represents cancer incidence] increases.”
Sierra said the results were conclusive.
“What was remarkable was that the trends that appeared in the simulations matched what we observed in the real data: in more cooperative populations, cancer tends to be less frequent, while in more competitive ones it can even have a “beneficial” effect at the population level, because it favours the renewal of individuals,” she said.
“It is a counterintuitive result, but it is very revealing of how the way species are socially organised can influence their vulnerability to cancer.”
Blaustein argued that, “In ancient Greek mythology, if you cut the Hydra head, hoping to kill it, it had a paradoxical effect, producing more heads …
“In the cancer field we demonstrated with mathematical models that the competitive species benefit from higher cancer rates; on the contrary, the cooperative species find an advantage in lower cancer rates.”
Even though the Argentine team did not research differences between human groups and only compared humans as one species with other mammalian species, Blaustein speculated that the study could be used to analyse and debate the social organisation and life of human beings.
“Human beings present another level of complexity due to the interrelation between biological and socio-cultural issues,” he said.
“We did not work directly with humans but in speculative terms, humanity has evolved based on its socialisation and cooperation capacity to live in groups, feed and look for resources.”
“The current global productive system is associated with greater competition, individualism and increasing inequalities; so it should not be surprising to find a 22 per cent increase in cancer cases in the last 30 years.
“People have to work between 10 and 14 hours in some cases, without having time to sleep even eight hours a day, nor being able to enjoy leisure or sports. This generates immunosuppression. All this is a key factor in cancer progression in our bodies.”
Blaustein offered his opinion that inequalities were a crucial factor in the prevalence of cancer and illness in humans.
“Despite the biomedical developments, we are not seeing lower cancer rates. A considerable part of lower-income countries has an increase in cancer mortality rates,” he said.
He said cancer rates were not likely to decline in cases such as in Argentina where carcinogenic pesticides were sprayed near rural schools close to crop fields.
“It is not difficult to imagine another society with stronger bonds between humans and non-human living beings. We should think of a different society based on mutual aid, collaboration and cooperation as a way to avoid cancer.
“We should think of healthcare as a right and not a business, being able to have early diagnosis and treatments.”
However, he said the mammal study had limits when it came to analysing human social issues.
“We worked with primates. In this group we found high and low cancer incidence rates. Also, we found competitive and cooperative species. So, analysing primates we cannot have an obvious conclusion related to humans.”