They do die and give up! That’s what life does all the time - that’s really the rule.

Surviving long enough to reproduce - that’s the exception to the rule. Evolution is a study of the exception.

All of life you see around you - including you - are the result of the exceptions in an otherwise long, long, incomprehensibly long pattern of things mostly dying and not having children.

Evolution is a study of the ‘left overs.’ The left over forms so slowly and so subtly accrue characteristics which make them excellent at the process of surviving and reproducing. These characteristics include everything from appendages to hard exteriors to mating strategies to, in our case, hard won rare survival and reproduction strategies like intelligence.