New study shows chimpanzees experience menopause
November 21, 2023 - Mary Beth King
The University of New Mexico Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Comparative Human and Primate Physiology Center Melissa Emery Thompson has worked on research that examines the aging process in chimpanzees. In many ways they resemble their closest living relatives, humans. Her research has scrutinized similarities in physical condition and friendship in older chimps.
New research titled Demographic and hormonal evidence for menopause in wild chimpanzees published recently and highlighted in the New York Times and Washington Post shows that at least one group of older female chimpanzees experience menopause, a trait shared only by a small number of whale species and, of course, female humans.
This new research, which the Post called “a landmark discovery,” notes, “The findings complicate the mystery of why select species, including humans, experience menopause from practical and evolutionary perspectives.”
Until recently, it was unusual for female chimpanzees to live long enough to experience menopause, but in the security of the Kibale National Park in Uganda, some females are living long past their biological ability to have offspring.
Full story at UNM Newsroom
