{"id":859,"date":"2004-03-16T18:57:17","date_gmt":"2004-03-16T18:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=859"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:33:13","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:33:13","slug":"evolution-a-darwinian-explanation-for-grandma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=859","title":{"rendered":"evolution: a darwinian explanation for grandma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In contrast to most other animals, who reproduce  until they die, human females live long after their childbearing years  are over. Researchers offer proof in the March 11 <em>Nature<\/em> why this  anomaly makes evolutionary sense: grandmothers, by helping their own  children bring up children, ensure that more of their genes are passed  on to future generations. Mirkka Lahdenpera of the University of Turku  in Finland and her colleagues studied multigenerational demographic  records of Finnish and Canadian women during the 18th and 19th  centuries. According to their study, the longer a woman lived past  menopause, the more successfully her children reproduced, breeding  earlier and more frequently, and raising more offspring to adulthood.  The researchers discovered that women gained, on average, two extra  grandchildren for every 10 years they survived past age 50. A  grandmother can pass on her child-care knowledge and also help care for  her grandchildren, team member Virpi Lummaa stated in a press release,  &#8220;making it more likely that her children will have more children more  quickly.&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em>This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the <\/em>Boston Globe&#8217;s<em> Health\/Science section on 3\/16\/2004.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In contrast to most other animals, who reproduce until they die, human females live long after their childbearing years are over. Researchers offer proof in the March 11 Nature why this anomaly makes evolutionary sense: grandmothers, by helping their own &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=859\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1070,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions\/1070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}