Greg Laden has a pretty thorough critique of Life history trade-offs explain the evolution of human pygmies.
More like this
"Scientists" tell us that the tarsier is the only member of its lonely family Tarsiidae, which itself is the lone extant family within the infraorder Tarsiiformes... We here at Zooillogix think they might be more closely related to other species than zoologists think...
tags: pygmy hippo, hippopotamus, Choero
"Pygmy life expectancy is low, averaging 18 years and ranging from 15.6 to 24.2 years"
I had no idea of that.
It's the upper bound of the age range that's amazing to me.
Typically low life expectancy mostly has to do with very high rates of infant mortality.
It's often instructive to know what the life expectancy is for say 10 or 13 year olds. In the pygmy case it's got to be less than 24.2 years, which is rather amazing.