As any animal grows it add cells, and each cell has a pretty standard and fixed chance of becoming cancerous. This means that the more cells you have the greater the chance that one of them turns rogue and kills you.
Elephants and all large animals face these competing presures - on the one hand its safer to be big, and it takes a long time to become big, and on the other the bigger you are the more likely you are to die of cancer young. yet elephants have to some extent fixed this problem.
Why elephants live as long as they do is therefore an interesting question.
HTML5 mp4 https://video.livecode.wiki/assets/screen-casts/1754473666.mov The Problem with Elephants - a first draft.