Why Giant Animals Like Whales Don't Get Cancer More Often

What Happened A Reddit user posed this compelling question in the “Explain Like I’m Five” community, highlighting what scientists call “Peto’s Paradox.” Named after epidemiologist Richard Peto, this paradox describes the counterintuitive observation that cancer rates don’t correlate with body size across species. Blue whales, weighing up to 200 tons with an estimated 37 trillion cells, should theoretically have exponentially higher cancer rates than humans with our mere 37 trillion cells—yet they don’t.