
Survival Of The Sluggish: Scientists Find An Upside To A Low Metabolism - IndrekR
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/24/641623213/survival-of-the-sluggish-scientists-find-an-upside-to-a-low-metabolism
======
majos
Relevant animals: greenland sharks. ~20 ft sharks slowly, slowly drifting at
approximately 0.5 mph around the North Atlantic and killing time until they
bump into some edible decomposing thing. They reach sexual maturity at about
150 and kick off around 400 [1].

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark)

------
jmount
In some science fiction movies (for example "Life", "The Green Slime") the
alien life forms grow incredibly fast. If that works or is possible, it makes
one wonder why no terrestrial life-form didn't adapt a similar strategy. In
the above movies the fast life-form in question does come from a dead planet
(the probable outcome of such strategy, but not really something evolution has
enough time to select against).

~~~
nonbel
>"In some science fiction movies (for example "Life", "The Green Slime") the
alien life forms grow incredibly fast. If that works or is possible, it makes
one wonder why no terrestrial life-form didn't adapt a similar strategy."

Really? Bacteria can divide every twenty minutes and human T-cells once per
hour. Lets say you've got one bacteria cell living in your pipes at midnight,
by the next day you could have up to 2^(3*24) = 4.722366e+21 cells. At 1e-15
kg per cell[1], that would be 4,722,366 kg worth of them.

The limiting factor is food, not ability to divide.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28mass%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28mass%29)

~~~
jmount
And in the movies the life forms don't limit division, and probably exhausted
the food (hence the barren planets they come from).

~~~
nonbel
The mass of the earth is ~6e24 kg[1]. That would require 133 divisions:
2^(133)*1e-15 = 1e25 which works out to under two days.

I'm just saying that life can grow very fast under the right conditions... Do
you really want it to be able to grow faster than go from a single cell to the
size of the earth in 2 days?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass)

~~~
jmount
No, I don't believe I said that. I think I mentioned it would be bad in the
first note. It just is if something could do that in general conditions it is
an absorbing or end-state.

------
justinator
> New research suggests one effective evolutionary strategy: be lazy.

Now research Impatience and Hubris!

~~~
rfugger
> Now research Impatience and Hubris!

Do it fast, but we already know the answer.

