Why Don't All Blue Whales Have Cancer?

Do larger creatures get cancer more frequently?

Hosted by: Hank Green
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[Yoishify]

y'all be answering questions i didn't even know i had lmao

[benboddy]

I have been wondering the same thing my whole life

[kynnedy]

Hypertumors. So, their cancer gets cancer?

[lampje]

The bit about the anticancer genes making animals less fertile totally reminded me of the naked molerat! Since they are eusocial animals, they don't all mate, so they don't need to be fertile, and since they are pretty much immune to cancer, maybe they took a different evolutionary route. This is so interesting it makes me want to look for more research for this topic!

Edit: grammar

[Master_Therion]

What do you say to a Blue Whale that does have cancer? "Get whale soon."

[MrBlitzpunk]

Because whales never smoke
Bam
Wheres my nobel

[FBI-ovlb]

Hank is married? I didn’t know he was taken.

[lashersoul]

Absolutely love this channel but never comment :( however it would be nice to either make a playlist or a another video that helps explain cancer a bit better. It has occurred to me that a lot of people don't understand how cancer is formed. How many types of cancer exist and why it's so hard to find cures. Would love to help educate my friend and family on this subject. Can't get enough of this channel!

[dino]

I never would've thought to ask this. Thanks

[wilz]

Peto also studied young whale genitals, but his research papers are lost, collectively, the lost papers on his studies is called peto files.

[CyborgForgael]

Today I found out about hypertumors, and to my surprise, I think they sound awesome!

[lucnilis]

This really is one of those things I've been thinking about these days

[mkozachek]

I love SciShow, and I love that my company is sponsoring the show! ❤️ from a 23andMe engineer.

[coolbionicle]

the premature ageing actually makes a heck of a lot of sense. abundance of the gene makes the cell more sensitive to minimum gene corruption, reducing its overall cell lifespan, resulting in either a disbalance of cell division to death rate (asuming cell division rate over time remains constant) creating an aparent senecense process​, or, asuming cell division rate increases to compensate the cell death rate, an increase telomere wear procces which would lead to a premature reach in maturity and starting the natural ageing proces earlier. a sollution to this would be to add two aditional gene modifications: one that accelerates the oveall metabolism of the mice and another one that lengthens the telomeres length.

[Keika]

As someone who used to produce the 23 and Me kits in a factory, it's funny to see them sponsor a YouTuber I watch

[princeofexcess]

*Here is an interesting thing to consider*
We have cancer because it does not really effect us in our reproductive years that often. So evolution does not care to select against it. Yet as soon as it would effect us in large enough numbers selective pressure against cancer would have to increase.
This is the case for all animals. Therefore cancer rates would be semi consistent within all animals since if they werent those animals would start evolving to get the rate down.

Below that rate selection is insignificant since other things are much more likely to kill you (in your reproductive years)

So yea blue whales probably dont get cancer because they evolved better mechanisms to deal with it than we did.

[andrubernardo]

They surely *WILL* get cancer after watching YT Rewind 2017

[warhawkjah]

Hypertumors. Reminds me of when George Carlin said you could get two cancers that "would eat each other up instead of you."

[GenJotsu]

Ethan & Hila should check if they aren't related; wouldn't that be crazy??

[thomasherzog]

he registered his kid and send it back to he lab?

id love to have a genome test but 23&me doesnt deliver to my country. thx local laws.