Peto’s Paradox, the apparent lack of association between body size and cancer prevalence across species – has remained one of the most enchanting, elusive, and yet contentious issues in comparative biology. Through a combination of broad pan-species cancer prevalence data and next-generation phylogenetic comparative methods, we reveal that there is no evidence for Peto’s Paradox in terrestrial vertebrates: larger species do in fact have an increased cancer prevalence compared to smaller species. Furthermore, we show that repeated instances of accelerated body size evolution in birds and mammals are associated with a reduction in cancer prevalence, thus permitting birds and mammals to grow ever larger without incurring the same cancer prevalence for their size.
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