Infographic graph depicting the relationship between animal size and cancer mortality rate. Larger animals possess many more cells than smaller animals. It would be expected therefore that the larger animals would experience higher levels of mutations which lead to cancer and tumours. However the figures suggest that this is not what happens. In fact large animals such as elephants and giraffes have very low rates of cancer compared to most other mammals. There are odd exceptions, such as the naked mole rat, which bucks the trend of small animals as this species appears very resistant to developing cancer. The phenomenon of large animals having low cancer risk is not fully understood and is often referred to as Peto's Paradox.