Dying and Death

Dying is a process of time that all organisms undergo. from a biological standpoint, dying is synonymous with the concept of aging and metabolic degrading. The biological state or process of aging is known as senescence

A phenomenon known as cellular senescence is a cell's apparent ability to divide (reproduce via cellular division) only a limited number of times in culture, negating the concept of perpetual cell replication. This phenomenon was illustrated in 1965 by Leonard Hayflick and was called the Hayflick limit. The aging process of an organism is known as organismal senescence and is typically quantified in terms of what is called a life span. A life span is defined as a length of time that an individual organism is expected to live. In humans, a life span is typically measured in years.

Death is the permanent end of the life of an organism. The principal causes of death are typically aging-related processes that cause a decrease in, and consequently the cessation of, metabolic actions. Other causes of death could include prédation, environmental changes, and decreases in the availability of food. Overall, death is the inevitable consequence of aging. Although death may be viewed as undesirable, it is actually a natural part of the cycle of life.

Several factors influence the process of dying, thus slowing down or speeding up the process. Environmental factors most notably can affect the life span of an organism. A favorable environment can provide an organism with the proper food sources and ideal living conditions for it to attain a maximum life span. An unfavorable environment with insufficient food sources and hostile conditions (such as extreme temperatures) could directly cause an organism to die much sooner than its anticipated life expectancy.

Diet, or what an organism consumes for metabolic demands, can influence the rate of dying. For example, if an organism requires proteins and sugars to survive, where and how those two things are attained could have a positive or negative effect on that organism. If this food source is hazardous to procure or contains additional hazardous chemicals, then this could possibly increase that organism's rate of dying. However, if the food source is found in different forms that are safer to procure and/or contain less or no additional hazardous chemicals, then this would decrease that organism's rate of dying.

What type and how many predators an organism has can also affect its life span. An organism's ability to survive against predators depends on its genetics (inherited) and learned behavior. These two things give an organism a better chance of evading or fending off prédation.

In essence the abilities of an organism to obtain food and avoid becoming food can increase its life span and prolong the dying process. These abilities would be favored by natural selection, a natural process by which favorable traits or genetics (that are inherited) become more common (by way of [Page 353]survival) in a population of reproducing organisms and, consequently, unfavorable traits that are also heritable become less common or eventually extinct.