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You are giving "Nature" too much credit here. "Nature" doesn't care about whether a creature has a long and happy life. "Nature" just cares about how many babies that creature can produce before it dies, as long as those babies manage to make it to reproductive age themselves. Maybe that long bodied Serval can produce a few more kittens on average, despite its shortened lifespan... "Nature" would be perfectly happy with that trade-off. In fact, you could even imagine that a shorter life span might improve its descendants' survival to reproductive age, if it meant Mom or Dad wasn't competing with offspring for food supply. As far as "Nature" is concerned, that's great!If (just hypothetically) there was a gene that gave a cat double body length but halved its lifespan, Nature wouldn't make a serval that way [...]