Counterintuitive Facts (91): Why Do You Run Desperately but Only Stay in Place?

I. In "Through the Looking Glass," the Red Queen pulls Alice to run desperately. After running a long time, Alice finds they're still in the same place. Puzzled, she asks why. The Red Queen answers: "In this kingdom, you must run as fast as you can just to stay in place. If you want to go somewhere else, you must run even faster." This isn't just a fairy tale. It's biology's cruelest law: Red Queen Hypothesis.

II. In 1973, evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen proposed this theory to explain a strange phenomenon: Why doesn't species extinction probability decrease over time? Logically, the longer a species exists, the more "perfected" it should be, the less likely to go extinct. But statistics show otherwise. No matter how long a species has existed, its extinction risk is constant. Why?