this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Chimpanzees Go Through Menopause, Too (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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It is not obvious why selection should favor menopause or the continued survival of individuals that can no longer reproduce. The famous Grandmother Hypothesis had been used to explain the evolutionary significance of menopause. A new study conducted on the Ngogo chimpanzees community of wild chimpanzees in Uganda challenges this hypothesis. Science 27 Oct 2023 Vol 382, Issue 6669 DOI: 10.1126/science.add547

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Thanks so much, I understand the hypothesis now!!

And that article does show how it could map onto humans. For some reason I had been under the impression that early hominids did not necessarily have the females-as-strangers setup.

It's interesting to compare with elephants, who are matriarchal. The "Alice" of an asian elephant herd will often stop having kids (though, she biologically still can) so her daughters can have some, even though unlike Charlotte, her daughters are related to her so theoreticly it's more of a Bob/Daniel situation.