[xerula]

There is nothing new about the observation that body mass is correlated with lifespan, at the level of species - why should we be at all surprised that the correlation is described by some power law? There are compelling metabolic explanations for these patterns going back more than a century. What really excites modern biologists – and what the article completely fails to discuss (even to the point of claiming "this rule seems to govern all life") – are the numerous and dramatic exceptions to the rule: naked role rats, tardigrades, certain cnidarians ("immortal" jellyfish & hydra) and planarians, various lichens... In some of these cases, metabolic rate is divorced from body size through a well-characterized, indefinite hibernation 'mode', but more efficient DNA protection, repair and telomere length preservation systems are also important. And there is a substantial literature that explains unusually prolonged life-cycles using Evolutionary Stable Strategy modeling. All of which provide useful perspectives in aging research. Much more interesting would have been an article about how these violations of nature's "death formula" tell us how we might avoid death.