What can killer whales teach us about the menopause?
The menopause is a riddle for scientists. Why might the female of an animal types stop to recreate part of the way through her life, when common determination favors attributes that help an individual's qualities survive? An investigation of executioner whales - one of just two well evolved creatures separated from people to experience the menopause - is giving intimations.
Granny is spritely for a centenarian. When I at long last see San Juan Island's neighborhood big name, she jumps get out of the sea to enchanted wheezes from everybody on my vessel.
Granny is an executioner whale, or orca.
She lives in a beach front territory of the North Pacific, near Vancouver and Seattle, known as the Salish Sea. Keeping in mind she is warmly known as "Granny", her formal name is J2 - an alpha-numeric title that distinguishes her as an individual from a populace known as the Southern Resident orcas.
It is a tribe of 83 executioner whales in three particular cases - J, K and L-unit - all of which come back to this region of seaside Pacific conduits each late spring. The system of channels and quiet inshore ocean is peppered with forested and rugged islands. Its excellence makes it famous with voyagers - particularly whale-watchers.
What numerous camera-catching guests need most is a look at Granny - the most seasoned known living executioner whale. Her age is an assessment, in light of the age of her posterity when she and her case were initially examined in the mid 1970s. She is no less than 80, researchers say, and could be as old as 105.
I am here with a group of researcher who have a specific enthusiasm for her. They need to comprehend why J2, and alternate females of this populace, quit having babies in their 30s or 40s, despite the fact that they live so any longer. Scientists call it post-regenerative lifespan. We call it menopause.
Just three known warm blooded creatures encounter the menopause - orcas, short-finned pilot whales and we people. Indeed, even our nearest primate cousins, chimpanzees, don't experience it. Their fruitfulness dwindles with age and, in the wild, they rarely live past childbearing years.
However, female orcas and ladies advanced to live long, dynamic, post-conceptive lives.
Granny is spritely for a centenarian. When I at long last see San Juan Island's neighborhood big name, she jumps get out of the sea to enchanted wheezes from everybody on my vessel.
Granny is an executioner whale, or orca.
She lives in a beach front territory of the North Pacific, near Vancouver and Seattle, known as the Salish Sea. Keeping in mind she is warmly known as "Granny", her formal name is J2 - an alpha-numeric title that distinguishes her as an individual from a populace known as the Southern Resident orcas.
It is a tribe of 83 executioner whales in three particular cases - J, K and L-unit - all of which come back to this region of seaside Pacific conduits each late spring. The system of channels and quiet inshore ocean is peppered with forested and rugged islands. Its excellence makes it famous with voyagers - particularly whale-watchers.
What numerous camera-catching guests need most is a look at Granny - the most seasoned known living executioner whale. Her age is an assessment, in light of the age of her posterity when she and her case were initially examined in the mid 1970s. She is no less than 80, researchers say, and could be as old as 105.
I am here with a group of researcher who have a specific enthusiasm for her. They need to comprehend why J2, and alternate females of this populace, quit having babies in their 30s or 40s, despite the fact that they live so any longer. Scientists call it post-regenerative lifespan. We call it menopause.
Just three known warm blooded creatures encounter the menopause - orcas, short-finned pilot whales and we people. Indeed, even our nearest primate cousins, chimpanzees, don't experience it. Their fruitfulness dwindles with age and, in the wild, they rarely live past childbearing years.
However, female orcas and ladies advanced to live long, dynamic, post-conceptive lives.
No comments: