Natural selection, the process Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace described to explain evolution, has resulted in mechanisms that protect an organism, such as DNA repair, until it can generate healthy offspring. Over millions of years of evolution, the lifespan of an organism will tend to get longer if its ability to generate healthy offspring also increases. Both Wallace and Darwin also hypothesized that aging and death may be programmed so that organisms could age on purpose and die prematurely if it were advantageous to the species—to avoid overcrowding, for example.
