# What 3 species of animals on Earth experience menopause? - You can win some bar bets with this! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 2, 2016, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961 "2016-07-02T22:38:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2016, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/1 "2016-07-02T22:38:11Z")
“Menopause” in this case defined as living well after fertility has ceased. [Article and answer here](http://www.livescience.com/22574-animals-menopause.html) The answer is female humans, killer whales and pilot whales. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2016, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/2 "2016-07-02T22:54:02Z")
That is fascinating! I always presumed all mammals experienced menopause. ---
**Author:** ![Waltzes\_with\_Cacti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90ced4/32.png) [@Waltzes\_with\_Cacti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waltzes_with_Cacti)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2016, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/3 "2016-07-02T23:00:47Z")
So the other great apes don’t experience a cessation of fertility? Only us? Well, that’s nice to know. It means Koko the gorilla, who’ll be 45 years old on Monday, may yet reproduce. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/4 "2016-07-03T00:02:13Z")
Does this mean that other species remain fertile indefinitely, or that they die prior to their age of menopause? ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/5 "2016-07-03T00:10:37Z")
My understanding from reading the article is that once they are no longer fertile, they die. Whereas humans and some whales, live for decades after their fertility is gone. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/6 "2016-07-03T01:07:19Z")
Wait, Greenland whales don’t? They can get over 200 years old, so I had them as a top contender. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/7 "2016-07-03T04:00:56Z")
Most people in bars don’t like to talk about things like this, ask me how I know. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/8 "2016-07-03T08:59:15Z")
[Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menopause#Other_animals) says that quite a few species experience menopause: > [@](#): > > Menopause in the animal kingdom appears to be uncommon, but the presence of this phenomenon in different species has not been thoroughly researched. Life histories show a varying degree of senescence; rapid senescing organisms (e.g., Pacific salmon and annual plants) do not have a post-reproductive life-stage. Gradual senescence is exhibited by all placental mammalian life histories. > > Menopause has been observed in several species of nonhuman primates,[82] including rhesus monkeys,[101] and chimpanzees.[102] Menopause also has been reported in a variety of other vertebrate species including elephants,[103] short-finned pilot whales[104] and other cetaceans,[105][106] the guppy,[107] the platyfish, the budgerigar, the laboratory rat and mouse, and the opossum. However, with the exception of the short-finned pilot whale, such examples tend to be from captive individuals, and thus they are not necessarily representative of what happens in natural populations in the wild. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/9 "2016-07-03T10:08:36Z")
How does this apply to our five geriatric hens who have stopped laying, yet are content in their retirement? ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/10 "2016-07-03T15:18:58Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > How does this apply to our five geriatric hens who have stopped laying, yet are content in their retirement? Now you’ve got me thinking because we keep backyard hens too. And our oldest 2 (6+ years old) have stopped laying & seem to be all moody & disagreeable. ---
**Author:** ![spamforbrains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@spamforbrains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spamforbrains)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/11 "2016-07-04T01:41:40Z")
Menopause isn’t just the cessation of fertility, aka when all the eggs are used up, it seems to be a programmed phase of life where fertility is shut down at a particular age for some biological reason, probably to protect the life of the female animal because breeding becomes dangerous past that age and the animal has important things to contribute to the group other than genetics. If menopause in humans was just about “when the eggs run out” women who take hormonal birth control most of their lives wouldn’t experience menopause because they haven’t been ovulating most of their lives and still have most of their eggs. And yet they do. Most species simply experience a slow, gradual decline in fertility, not an abrupt stop at a predictable age. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2016, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-3-species-of-animals-on-earth-experience-menopause-you-can-win-some-bar-bets-with-this/758961/12 "2016-07-04T01:49:05Z")
> [@Enola\_Gay](#): > > Now you’ve got me thinking because we keep backyard hens too. And our oldest 2 (6+ years old) have stopped laying & seem to be all moody & disagreeable. Sometimes old hens have such low estrogen levels that background baseline testosterone will cause them to crow and fight. We’ve considered HRT for one old timer.