Rad Mom Afternoon Snack: Menopausal Orcas

Humans and whales are the only mammals who go through menopause and the reason why is *beautiful*

We’re introducing a new feature to our Mommy (Indoctrination) Blog: little mini posts that are short and stimulating to help titillate that big, fat brain (and heart?) of yours. Hopefully this free offering will nudge you to shell out $5 to support our world domination scheme.

Almost all other female animals in the kingdom are fertile until they die. Elephants and orangutans, kangaroos, and all manner of lizard and amphibian can breed until their last breath. Not us, tho! And not our aquatic, placental, breastfeeding slippery cousins: whales.

We, humans, go through menopause and so do our toothy whaled sisters (orcas, belugas, pilot whales). But why? According to a new study in the journal Nature, menopause is likely an evolutionary adaptive trait. Data suggests menopause evolved to enable older female whales to help younger generations survive. Researches have called this “the grandma effect.” Grandmas help mothers live longer. This extended lifespan creates greater opportunity for overlap between generations and creates intergenerational families in the oceans, just like some humans do on land.

Devourer of seal meat

When mom and daughter are fertile at the same time there’s too much competition for resources. Humans and whales found a way around that: menopause. When older females stop reproducing, they can help the whole family group succeed. Indeed, orca whale pods with older grandmothers tend to thrive longer because meemaw knows all the hidden fishing spots!

This your sign, tell grandma to babysit, it’s her biological raison d'etre.

Ok enjoy this picture of a nursing whale:

---

Please enjoy this peek behind our paywall:

For millennia, birth was a female tradition handed down through generations of women whose bodies stored the knowledge in their bones. This female tradition deserves to be cherished but Western culture seeks to strike it down. Our culture embraces a medical model of birth—where outsiders, experts, and hourly workers deliver your baby. Birth isn’t treated as tradition but as a procedure. In the hospital, the tradition is procedure. And as a hospital Labor and Delivery nurse I witnessed the countless ways a hospital takes a divine ritual, desecrates it and makes birth obscene.