Menopause sets humans apart from chimps - sex - 14 December 2007 - New Scientist: "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.
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.
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.
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