Aging orangutans and chimpanzees are rarely seen in red sports cars, but apparently they go through a midlife crisis nonetheless. (click below to read more)
That's the implication of a new study that assessed the well-being of 508 great apes in zoos and sanctuaries in North America, Asia and Australia. Zookeepers and others who knew the apes well rated them on mood, pleasure derived from social situations, success in making goals and how happy the rater would be to spend a week as the ape.
It turns out that the apes' happiness exhibits the "U" shape familiar from human studies, with greater happiness in youth and old age but midlife as a low point.
The findings are important because they suggest that—rather than being triggered by mortgages or disappointments—the midlife crisis many humans experience might be at least partly the result of evolution.
"Evidence for a 'Midlife Crisis' in Great Apes Consistent With the U-Shape in Human Wellbeing," Alexander Weiss, James E. King, Miho Inoue-Murayama, Tetsuro Matsuzawa and Andrew J. Oswald, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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