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Researchers had been trying to figure out why this was the case for decades, but it was only a few years ago that a team of researchers narrowed this incredible trait down to an overabundance of a gene called p53, which suppresses tumours. African elephants have 40 copies of p53. Humans have just one.

But now a team of researchers at the University of Utah has found more clues as to how it occurs, and it's not just down to p53.

They studied what had been known for several decades since the 1960s as "junk DNA" - DNA that does not code for proteins. That doesn't make it useless, however - recent studies have found that it performs other functions, such as being able to control when and where genes are expressed.

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