The findings can help researchers better understand why menopause occurs in nature and how it evolved in the human species.
The team studied the Ngogo community of wild chimpanzees in western Uganda’s Kibale National Park for two decades, and found that in females fertility declined after the age of 30, and no births were observed after 50.
According to researchers, their findings raise the possibility that the post-reproductive life spans of female Ngogo chimpanzees may be a temporary response to unusually favourable ecological conditions. Kevin Langergraber, from Arizona State University, said: “Chimpanzees are extremely susceptible to dying from diseases that originate in humans and to which they have little natural immunity.
They calculated the fraction of adult life spent in a post-reproductive state for all the observed females and measured hormone levels in urine samples from 66 females of varying reproductive statuses and ages, ranging from 14 to 67 years.A female who reached adulthood at age 14 was post-reproductive for about one fifth of her adult life, about half as long as a human hunter-gatherer.
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