Menopause

Definition of Menopause

From the elephant glossary Section: endocrinology

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Several cases of menopause of elephants has been recorded, although Dave Dalton claim they dont have menopause.

From observational data, it was found that there are three elemental criteria that all menopausal Species must fulfill: first, it has to be long-lived (average female lifespan of the Species has to be forty years or more); second, it must live in Groups ; and third, the average female-male lifespan differential has to be at least thirty percent or more. In addition, a corollary criterion for menopause was also established: for a species' females to be menopausal, the Encephalization Quotient (EQ) for the Species has to be 2.5 or more. Though humans do not fulfill the third menopausal criterion currently, it has been shown that when the menopausal mechanism first became common in human ancestors, in all likelihood, that principle was conformed to. Of the multitude of mammals around, only a few Species satisfy all three menopausal criteria, and hence are the only ones whose females undergo the menopausal process. Many hitherto unanswered questions with respect to menopause, such as, while long and short-finned pilot whales are close to each other both genetically and physiologically, why short-finned females are menopausal while long-finned females are not, why orca females are menopausal while elephant females are not, in spite of both being long-lived, etc., can be answered on the basis of those three criteria.

Reference list Koehl, Dan, (2024). Menopause. Elephant Encyclopedia, available online retrieved 20 September 2021 at https://www.elephant.se/index.php?id=246. (archived at the Wayback machine)

Sources used for this article is among others:

Dave Dalton, How evolutionary biology can explain why human and a few marine mammal females are the only ones that are menopausal, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35405202/

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Categories glossary | endocrinology

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