![]() ![]() Females with swellings often have males bugging them all day long, so they also don't get to feed as much.” “We also found that this was stressful for the females being competed over, as males not only fight with each other, but intimidate and harass the females. The males aren’t the only ones stressing during this time. Females get large swellings of their genital skin for 10 to 12 days around the time of ovulation, and this instigates a lot of competition among the males.” We also found that male chimpanzees had higher cortisol when there was a sexually receptive female present. But, high-ranking chimpanzee males expend a lot of energy in status displays and engage in high rates of aggression. “In our study, male chimpanzees with high rank had higher cortisol levels, which is the opposite of the pattern in humans where high status is less stressful. Many of the same things that stress humans also stress the chimpanzees.Ĭhimpanzees live in complex social networks, which can cause all kinds of stress as individuals compete for food, status, and mating opportunities, Emery Thompson noted. We can use these samples to monitor reproductive function, stress, energetic condition, lean body mass, hydration, and indicators of health.” Since 1998, we have collected over 40,000 urine samples from this one group of chimpanzees. We go out before dawn to make sure we find the chimpanzees in their nests and collect urine just as they are beginning their day. Like people, chimpanzees usually pee just after they wake up and when they are leaving one location to go to another. “Our research staff uses catchpoles fashioned from forked sticks with small plastic bags on the end to collect the urine as it falls. They also sleep in the trees in nests they make from branches. Chimpanzees spend about half of their day up in the trees, where they find most of their food. ![]() “Most people want to know how we collect urine,” Emery Thompson laughed. In order to study the cortisol levels in the chimpanzees, the team members had to collect urine samples from the primates. We found that aging chimpanzees had a blunted circadian rhythm, paralleling an important feature of aging in humans,” Emery Thompson said. Like humans, chimpanzees have a circadian rhythm of cortisol production with a peak early in the morning followed by a decline throughout the day. Their levels of cortisol increased with age, and this could not explained by changes in social status or reproductive activity. “We found strong evidence that a similar kind of dysregulation occurs in chimpanzees. But, high levels of cortisol contribute to many of the degenerative processes of human aging, including bone loss, cardiovascular disease, immunosenescence, which is the gradual deterioration of the immune system brought on by natural age advancement, and cognitive impairments.Įmery Thompson explained that this problem is exacerbated because the system that regulates cortisol production wears out as humans age, so the amount of cortisol we produce increases, along with its negative consequences. As an example, neither chimpanzees nor humans living in small-scale subsistence groups are susceptible to atherosclerosis (clogged arteries), suggesting that it may be the unusual diets and activity levels of industrialized societies that places us at risk.”Ĭortisol is the key product of the stress response and plays an essential role in energy metabolism. “This kind of research may help provide clues as to what factors shaped the prolonged human lifespan, as well as the extent to which aging processes are influenced by environment. “Chimpanzees can live past the age of 60 in the wild and are human's closest living relatives, so the reason for this comparison is to determine which aspects of aging are unique to the human species, or not,” Emery Thompson explained. They are currently trying to understand the aging process in chimpanzees and how it compares with that in humans. ![]() The research group has studied a community of about 55 wild chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda, for the past 32 years. Enigk, and Kris Sabbi, evolutionary anthropologist Andreas Berghänel, and associate professor of Anthropology and co-director of the Comparative Human and Primate Physiology Center Martin N. The New Mexico team is led by associate professor of Anthropology and co-director of the Comparative Human and Primate Physiology Center Melissa Emery Thompson. In their recently published paper, Wild chimpanzees exhibit humanlike aging of glucocorticoid regulation, the researchers relate findings of their decades-long study. A team of researchers from The University of New Mexico, working with the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda, have found similarities in the way chimpanzees and humans age. ![]()
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