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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 May 5.
Published in final edited form as: JAMA. 2015 Nov 3;314(17):1850–1860. doi: 10.1001/jama.2015.13134

Figure 1. Cancer Incidence Across Species by Body Size and Life Span.

Figure 1

The mammalian species studied span the striped grass mouse to the elephant. Cancer incidence is not associated with mass and life span, as shown by the logistic regression (model fit shown as blue line; 95%CIs shown as dashed lines). Each data point in the graph is supported by a minimum of 10 necropsies for the included mammals (San Diego Zoo) and 644 annotated deaths for elephants (Elephant Encyclopedia database). The risk of cancer depends on both the number of cells in the body and the number of years over which those cells can accumulate mutations; therefore, cancer incidence is plotted as a function of mass × life span. All data with 95%CIs are presented in eTable 1 in the Supplement.