The only other group of animals that experiences menopause to the extent that humans do is the toothed whale. Short-finned pilot whale and ecotype resident killer whale females can live to the age of ninety; […]
“Cryptic female choice” is essentially a female’s way of exercising some post-coital power over whose sperm will fertilize her eggs. There are many reasons why a female would want to retain some kind of control […]
Rats (superfamily Muroidea) have a well-studied mating system that often involves males becoming sexually satiated. This means that they literally get tapped out of sperm and it takes approximately fifteen days for their fertility to […]
As opposed to the rodents who experience facultative diapause, carnivore moms experience obligate diapause. Obligately diapausing mothers experience a period of embryonic inactivity each time a pregnancy occurs. Regardless of environmental conditions, there is a […]
We’ve already covered one hypothesis for why menopause exists, but there is another main hypothesis for the advent of reproductive cessation, and this one is an adaptive one. Picture it: as ancestral humans were expanding […]
In many anuran (frog and toad) species, females have a sperm-storage organ (a spermatheca) that enables them to keep sperm for long periods of time. This too can allow for the possibility of female choice […]
The human female is a complicated creature. The selection of an appropriate mate is often an extremely difficult process that can lead to sadness and heartache when we get it wrong. It seems so simple […]