Gorillas go through menopause, too - Science - MSNBC.com

Gorillas go through menopause, too - Science - MSNBC.com

Talk about nonsense!

This AP wire story is receiving broad coverage in the US. They are overlooking some poorly planned science and ethical issues raised as a result of the authors' conclusions and comments.

First of all, they have overlooked the most important consequences of their longevity: Aging gorillas may face many more years - perhaps decades - of suffering in captivity. Inadequate space, inability to perform natural behaviors and other aspects of captivity are detrimental. Many primates imprisoned in zoos must be medicated for depression, self-mutilation and other abnormal behaviors. Instead of wondering whether gorillas have hot-flashes, we should be looking for ways to transform zoos from prisons that breed and trade animals into modern, desperately needed sanctuaries that provide for the well-being of individual animals.

Then there is this:

"The new findings argue against the so-called "grandmother hypothesis," because female gorillas in the wild migrate away from their family groups and don't hang around to care for the grandkids.

Instead of an evolutionary adaptation, menopause could result merely from humans and captive gorillas living longer," Austad said.

The new findings are about hormonal changes in captive gorillas and they have no scientific bearing on the grandmother hypothesis. The information Austad refers to has to do with wild gorillas - and it's not new information. The fact that gorillas emigrate from their natal troops is common knowledge about their natural history - nothing new. Furthermore, it's not the "grandmothers" that leave; once they are old enough to mate, gorillas of both sexes leave the group where they were born. There is no opportunity for grandparenting by either sex, and so gorillas make a poor test case for the grandmother hypothesis. We might as well use fish to study the evolution of long distance running.

If we are just going to use ape social systems as a test of the grandmother hypothesis, we sure don't need any animals in zoos to do it. The only apes who could provide grandmothering are chimpanzees and bonobos. The social systems of other apes (Pongidae and Hylobatidae) necessarily preclude this option.

Quite frankly, Austad's comments seem nonsensical. Evidence of senesence has been detected among a wide variety of species with many different reproductive and parenting strategies. A single functional explanation for menopause across species is unecessary. We would be much better off looking at menopause in the larger context of life-history than paying big bucks for gorilla hormone tests.

It's disappointing that our government paid for this study at all. Given the varied experience of menopause across cultures and among individual women, the precise nature of hormonal and behavioral changes during menopause in captive gorillas is unlikely to provide information useful in a health care context. If taxpayer money is going to be spent on gorillas, it should be to alleviate their suffering in captivity or to protect and study these highly endangered creatures in the wild, not flushed down the drain on useless zoo animal "models" of aging.