There comes a time in some men’s lives when the days seem darker, mortality more certain and the only sensible response is to blow the life savings on a sports car.
Radical and often ill-advised changes in lifestyle have become the calling cards of the midlife crisis, but if it is more than a myth, then humans may not be the only animals to experience it.
An international team of scientists claims to have found evidence of a slump in well-being among middle-aged chimpanzees and orangutans. The lull in happiness in the middle years, they say, is the great-ape equivalent of the midlife crisis.
The study, which was published on monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has raised eyebrows among some scientists. However, according to the authors the findings suggest that the midlife crisis may have its roots in the biology humans share with our closest evolutionary cousins.
“There’s a common understanding that there’s a dip in well-being in middle age and that’s been found in many datasets across human cultures,” said Alex Weiss, a psychologist at Edinburgh University.
“We took a step back and asked whether it’s possible that instead of the midlife crisis being human-specific and driven only by social factors, it reflects some evolved tendency for middle-aged individuals to have lower well-being,” he said.
The team from the US, Japan, Germany and the UK asked zookeepers, carers and others who worked with male and female apes of various ages to complete questionnaires about the animals. The forms included questions about each ape’s mood, the enjoyment they gained from socializing and their success at achieving certain goals.
The final question asked how carers would feel about being the ape for a week. They scored their answers from one to seven.
More than 500 apes were included in the study in three separate groups. The first two groups were chimpanzees and the third was made up of orangutans from Sumatra or Borneo. The animals came from zoos, sanctuaries and research centers in the US, Australia, Japan, Canada and Singapore.
When the researchers analyzed the questionnaires they found that well-being in the apes fell in middle age and climbed again as the animals moved into old age.
In captivity great apes often live to 50 or more. The nadir in the animals’ well-being occurred, on average, at 28.3 and 27.2 years old for the chimpanzees, and 35.4 years old for the orangutans.
“In all three groups we find evidence that well-being is lowest in chimpanzees and orangutans at an age that roughly corresponds to midlife in humans,” Weiss said. “On average, well-being scores are lowest when animals are about 30 years old.”
The team says the temporary fall in ape well-being may result from more depressed apes dying younger, or through age-related changes in the brain that are mirrored in humans.
Weiss conceded that, unlike men, great apes are not known to pursue radical and often disastrous lifestyle changes in middle age.
Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, was dubious about the findings.
“What can produce a sense of well-being or contentedness that varies across the lifespan like this? It’s hard to see anything in an ape’s life that would have that sort of pattern, that they would cogitate about. They’re not particularly good at seeing far ahead into the future, that’s one of the big differences between them and us,” Dunbar said.
Alexandra Freund, professor of psychology at the University of Zurich, was also skeptical. She said the concept of a midlife crisis was shaky, even in humans.
“In my reading of the literature, there is no evidence for the midlife crisis. If there’s any indication of decline in emotional or subjective well-being it is very small and in many studies it’s not there at all,” Freund said.
However, Weiss believes the findings could point to a deeper understanding of the emotional crisis some people may experience.
“If we want to find the answer as to what’s going on with the midlife crisis, we should look at what is similar in middle-aged humans, chimps and orangutans,” he said.
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
India and Canada yesterday reached a string of agreements, including on critical mineral cooperation and a “landmark” uranium supply deal for nuclear power, the countries’ leaders said in New Delhi. The pacts, which also covered technology and promoting the use of renewable energy, were announced after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed a fresh start in the relationship between their nations. “Our ties have seen a new energy, mutual trust and positivity,” Modi said. Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi
RSS