A team of researchers has been studying the Ngogo community of wild chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park for over twenty years. Their recent publication in the journal Science reveals that female chimpanzees in this population can experience menopause and have a postreproductive lifespan.
Prior to the study, these traits had only been found among mammals in a few species of toothed whales, and among primates — only in humans. These new demographic and physiological data can help researchers better understand why menopause and post-fertile survival occur in nature, and how it evolved in the human species.
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