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Interesting thing about orcas, they’re the only animal besides humans that go through the menopause. In orca pods the grandmothers appear to take primary responsibility for raising their grandchildren. In the human context when we were still living in the wild you can imagine people would start having kids at 14/15 but at that age the young healthily fathers would still be expected to hunt when the young mothers would still be capable of foraging etc. so having the older grandparents (probably in their 30s but that would be quite elderly when our life expectancy was around the 40 mark) rearing the children would probably have made sense. Probably also helps explain the very close emotional bonds that exist between grandparents and grandchildren.
In the human context when we were still living in the wild you can imagine people would start having kids at 14/15 but at that age the young healthily fathers would still be expected to hunt when the young mothers would still be capable of foraging etc. so having the older grandparents (probably in their 30s but that would be quite elderly when our life expectancy was around the 40 mark) rearing the children would probably have made sense.
People often confuse life expectancy with the age to which an average person can expect to live. Those are not the same numbers. Infant mortality is included in life expectancy calculations, so when infant mortality is relatively high it drags the number way down. The life expectancy of males who live to the age of 5 . For women it has changed a lot because of less deaths during childbirth.
For all the crowing about modern medicine, it turns out that we really haven't done anything on the macro scale other than drastically reduce infant mortality and complications from childbirth.
Yes you are correct, and I do usually avoid falling into that trap. One great example I always use to illustrate the point you’re making is that Tiro, who was a slave of Cicero and the guy who developed the Latin shorthand writing we still use today, lived to be over 100. Now Tiro did act as Cicero’s secretary so wouldn’t have lived as harsh a life as a slave down the mines or anything like that, but a slave living to what we would still regard as a good age today over 2,000 years ago shows how little actual progress has been made in this regard.
But grandma Orca still has to hunt to survive.
Orca pods act as communities and share their bounty, so grandma will be taken care of. The other theorised aspect to the menopause in orcas is that if grandma kept breeding while her children were also doing so there might not be enough food to be shared among so many youth unable to provide for themselves. But I prefer the other theory that they care for their grandchildren as a best method to protect their progeny and ensure their family line continues. Mainly because that theory makes me feel warm and fluffy inside.
Herd animals in general tend to be lead by the oldest female, who has the most experience and confidence.
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