Do any animals other than humans undergo menopause?

Which animals actually stop reproducing early?

The strongest case is toothed whales — the group that includes dolphins, killer whales, belugas and pilot whales. In several of these species, females live for years after their last calf, and this postreproductive phase is well documented from population data, body and ovary measurements, and lifespan markers [1]. A comparative analysis found that toothed whales are the only mammal group in which menopause has evolved more than once, which is why they are so useful for testing ideas about why menopause exists at all [2].

Chimpanzees are a newer and weaker case. In a wild population in Uganda's Ngogo forest, females older than 50 had no offspring, and urine samples showed reduced ovulatory cycling — evidence of a postreproductive phase, though it does not appear to begin as sharply as human menopause [1]. Elephants are a different story again: female fertility starts to decline after about age 50, but many cows keep calving into their 60s, so there is no clear upper limit and no distinct menopause [1].

One reason the picture is confusing is the word itself. "Menopause" strictly means the last menstrual period, and only a few mammals menstruate at all. Some researchers therefore prefer "oopause" — the permanent end of ovulation — which allows fairer comparison across species and may turn out to be more common in mammals than once thought [1].

Why would a female stop breeding and keep living?

From a pure reproduction standpoint, stopping early looks like a bad deal. The leading explanation is the "grandmother hypothesis": if an older female stops competing with her daughters for resources and mates, she can instead help raise her grandchildren, passing on knowledge and care. In toothed whales, the evidence fits this well. Menopause appears to have arisen when females' lifespans lengthened without their reproductive years lengthening, which widened the overlap with grandchildren and offspring without increasing competition with daughters [2]. This matches whale social life, where females stay in their mother's family group for life, forming matrilineal pods [1].

Chimpanzees show something similar but weaker: older females may contribute knowledge and care, though their social structure differs from whales' and the grandmother effect is thought to be less pronounced [1]. Elephants also live in grandmother-like groups, yet lack a distinct menopause — which suggests that the benefits of continuing to reproduce late may outweigh the costs in that species [1]. A comparison of preindustrial humans with elephants concluded that a long lifespan alone does not produce menopause [1].

One proposed framework argues that menopause requires a specific combination: a long average female lifespan (roughly 40 years or more), group living, and a large gap between female and male lifespans, with high brain size (a high encephalization quotient) as an added condition [5]. On this view, only a few mammals meet all the criteria, which would explain why, for instance, orcas are menopausal while elephants are not despite both being long-lived [5]. This is a proposed set of criteria rather than a settled consensus, but it captures the same theme as the whale work: long life is necessary but not sufficient.

Do these animals have hot flushes and other symptoms?

This is where the evidence thins out sharply. In humans, menopause brings hormonal shifts (falling estrogen and progesterone, rising gonadotropins), symptoms such as hot flushes and vaginal atrophy, and physical changes such as bone loss and cardiovascular effects. Data from other species are scarce [1]. Field researchers cannot easily ask a wild whale about hot flushes or mood, so studies have focused on measurable reproductive signs: age at last birth, evidence of ovulation, and how long females live afterward [1].

That gap matters for interpretation. The whale and chimpanzee findings establish a postreproductive life phase, not that these animals experience a human-like cluster of symptoms [1]. Some laboratory work does model menopause in mice — for example, chemically inducing it to study menopause-associated asthma or knee osteoarthritis — but these are engineered conditions that skip the natural aging and life-history context, so they tell us about mechanisms of disease rather than about menopause as it naturally occurs in a species [3][4].

What the animal comparisons suggest about human menopause

The comparative picture supports the idea that menopause is not an inevitable byproduct of living long. Instead, it seems to require particular social and life-history conditions — close intergenerational cooperation being the recurring theme [1][2]. In that view, the postreproductive years are not simply a loss of function but a shift from one evolutionary role to another, with the body maintained for decades after fertility ends [1].

The evidence level differs by species, and it is worth keeping that in view. The toothed whale case rests on multiple lines of data and a broad comparative analysis [1][2]; the chimpanzee case rests on one wild population's behavioral, demographic and hormonal data and is described as lacking a sharp onset [1]; the elephant case is evidence of gradual decline rather than menopause [1]. The criteria-based explanation for why only a few species qualify is a proposed model [5]. Taken together, the findings are consistent with the grandmother hypothesis having shaped menopause in both humans and toothed whales, but they do not prove a single shared cause.

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