

Why Killer Whales Go Through Menopause but Elephants Don’t - Hooke
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/05/why-killer-whales-go-through-menopause-but-elephants-dont/

======
reasonattlm
This open access paper covers the territory pretty well for humans, giving a
good background and plenty of references on the way to arguing the author's
hypothesis (which is just another hypothesis among scores of plausible ones,
don't give it too much weight):

[http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v6/n2/full/100640.html](http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v6/n2/full/100640.html)

"Why do humans live longer than other higher primates? Why do women live
longer than men? What is the significance of the menopause? Answers to these
questions may be sought by reference to the mechanisms by which human aging
might have evolved. Here, an evolutionary hypothesis is presented that could
answer all three questions, based on the following suppositions. First, that
the evolution of increased human longevity was driven by increased late-life
reproduction by men in polygynous primordial societies. Second, that the lack
of a corresponding increase in female reproductive lifespan reflects
evolutionary constraint on late-life oocyte production. Third, that
antagonistic pleiotropy acting on androgen-generated secondary sexual
characteristics in men increased reproductive success earlier in life, but
shortened lifespan. That the gender gap in aging is attributable to androgens
appears more likely given a recent report of exceptional longevity in eunuchs.
Yet androgen depletion therapy, now used to treat prostatic hyperplasia,
appears to accelerate other aspects of aging (e.g. cardiovascular disease).
One possibility is that low levels of androgens throughout life reduces aging
rate, but late-life androgen depletion does not."

------
guard-of-terra
"grandmother hypothesis... it suggests that older females forgo the option to
bear more children so they can support their existing ones."

Except that it is broken for modern humans and we don't know how to make it
work again.

Like so many things in our biology.

