Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Learning and death

A new study reveals that the evolution of an improved learning ability could come at a particularly high price: an earlier death. Researchers found that although learning ability could be bred into a population of fruit flies, it shortened their lives by 15%. When the researchers compared their learned flies to colonies selectively bred to live long lives, they found even greater differences. Whereas learned flies had reduced life spans, the long-lived flies learned less well than even average flies.

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