Menopause sets humans apart from chimps


	Menopause sets humans apart from chimps

wildcat

12-14-2007 8:57 AM

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tags:

human, life, biology, menopause, fertility, evolution, reproduction

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/826d5f8d-9baf-4b00-84df-43ade9ed8854/0F9CD59C-676C-486C-8978-7C65FB57770A/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13052-menopause-sets-humans-apart-from-chimps.html" href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13052-menopause-sets-humans-apart-from-chimps.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.newscientist.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13052-menopause-sets-humans-apart-from-chimps.html"><P>Chimps share many traits that we consider to be uniquely human, but now a new study suggests that the menopause really does set humans apart from other apes.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13052-menopause-sets-humans-apart-from-chimps.html"><P>A detailed look at long-term fertility data from six populations of chimpanzees, compared with similar data from populations of hunter-gatherer humans, shows that both chimp and human birth rates have similar patterns of reproductive decline after the age of 40.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13052-menopause-sets-humans-apart-from-chimps.html"><P>But where chimp survival drops along with fertility, humans stop reproducing and continue to live for a long time. Some chimps in their 40s are in fact better at reproducing than humans at that age. And contrary to the general case in humans, in chimps old females are preferred by males.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13052-menopause-sets-humans-apart-from-chimps.html"><P>“Human life history is in fact one of the most radical departures from the apes,” says <A target="ns" href="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~memery/">Melissa Emery Thompson</A>, at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, who led the research.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13052-menopause-sets-humans-apart-from-chimps.html"><H5>Aged mums</H5></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/0F9CD59C-676C-486C-8978-7C65FB57770A/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>