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Newlyweds land paid job living for free on gorgeous, uninhibited Irish island

They beat out 80,000 other applicants for the job of a lifetime.

Camille Rosenfeld; Alice Hayes

It's their dream of a lifetime.

What’s your dream job? President of the United States? A famous influencer with millions of followers and brand partnerships? A former NBA player who now cruises the airwaves with his besties, à la Charles Barkley? No? Well, what about this: Moving to a remote, uninhabited island in Ireland where there’s no running water, no hot showers, and no electricity? Sound enticing?

While that may not exactly sound like “heaven” to most folks, for newlywed couple Camille Rosenfeld (26) from Minnesota and James Hayes (37) from Tralee, Ireland, this version of the island life is exactly what they signed up for. From April 1 to September 30, the newlywed couple will become the caretakers of Great Blasket Island, a remote and uninhabited island off Ireland’s coast in the Atlantic Ocean.

stone homes near the ocean The beautiful, brutal Great Blasket IslandGreat Blasket Island

Once there, they’ll be trading modern conveniences for candlelight and the constant company of seagulls—an existence not terribly dissimilar from the one depicted in Robert Eggers’ 2019 movie, The Lighthouse—and the couple couldn’t be more delighted.

“Oh my gosh…it seems like such a dream come true,” Rosenfeld gushed to CBC Radio. “You wouldn't even think it would be a possibility. We feel really lucky that we were chosen.”

But make no mistake: this is not a vacation. Like Jack Torrance in The Shining, Rosenfeld and Hayes will become Great Blasket’s live-in caretakers, tasked with attending to the principal island of the Blaskets in County Kerry, Ireland. They will live in a small stone house on a windswept hill overlooking the gray, stormy seas at night. By day, they will run five holiday cottages and a coffee hatch for day-trippers visiting the island. “I genuinely think we will fall in with the rhythm of our new life and sense of freedom,” said Hayes, who has been to the island once before. “We won’t have the responsibilities of our jobs or day-to-day life, so it’s a chance to live a simpler life.”

“It looks like something from The Wizard of Oz”

Located about a mile off the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, Great Basket Island— or in Irish, An Blascaod Mór—is a place of stunning natural beauty, where emerald hills glisten and below the cliffs lie sparkling turquoise waters. “It’s just so green, the greenest grass you’d ever see,” Rosenfeld said. “During a few weeks in the summer, there’s these beautiful purple flowers that bloom all across the fields. It looks like something from The Wizard of Oz.”

seals on beach Hello, seals Start Travel

Once a flourishing fishing and farming outpost, Great Blasket Island was previously home to a tight-knit Irish community. For centuries, residents ate wildly caught fish and rabbits and harvested potatoes. In its heyday, the island nurtured a vibrant literary culture, with voices like Peig Sayers, Tomás Ó Criomhthain, and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin immortalizing the raw beauty and hardship of life there. However, by 1953, the island’s remaining inhabitants were forced to evacuate due to dwindling numbers and the lack of emergency services there during storms. Now, the island is a living museum of Gaelic heritage and a place where wildlife thrives.

While the island may not have many humans these days, Great Blasket Island is home to a great number of marine life: Gray seals (also known as “horseheads”) are the island’s star attraction, with their short flippers and hidden ears (gray seals lack ear flaps). During the late spring, thousands of gray seals come to Great Blasket to congregate, where they can be spotted among sharks, dolphins, whales, and seabirds. “We have no fears of anything around island life, not even the large number of seals that make their home on the beaches there,” the couple said. “We will deal with any issues as they come along.”

Landing the job

Billy O’Connor and his wife, Alice Hayes (no relation to James), who own the small collection of holiday cottages Camille and James will soon oversee, first advertised the live-in position in 2020. Initially, they were awash with over 80,000 applicants. Now, for their own sake, they’ve capped the number of applications to a mere 300. To deter hopefuls looking for a pleasant holiday, Billy and Alice try to stress the grueling nature of the job: “First, we try to put them off because if anything, it is quite romanticized,” says Alice. “But during the season, it can be quite intense for the caretakers. Most people, when they finish work, go home to their safe haven and relax. But I often say to people going out there that they won’t have that. You close the half-door where you were serving coffee, and you are home.”

Camille and James, on the other hand, are excited to trade a life in the fast lane for one that's much simpler. The two met in 2021 at the Burren College of Art, where Hayes was in residency as a visual artist, and Rosenfeld was studying abroad at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she studied art and business. They’d actually applied for the caretaker position the year before, but the timing didn't work out because of their scheduled wedding.

couple, selfie by the water Meet your new stewardsCamille Rosenfeld

When they reapplied the following year, Alice and Billy were ecstatic. "When we saw that Camille and James had applied again for the positions for this year, we were delighted as they are just so enthusiastic and committed to outdoor life," says Alice.

Stewardship: A growing interest in Europe

Besides being an excellent adventure for a newlywed couple, this hands-on approach to land stewardship is part of a growing trend in Europe. Land stewardship is increasingly being recognized as a practical and rewarding tool for nature and biodiversity conservation, often found at the intersection of environmental protection and sustainable economic practices. In the United Kingdom, for example, such land trusts play a significant role in managing protected areas and sites of natural importance. Ahead of their new jobs, Camille and James reflect on the part they’ll play in this larger context. "I think both Camille and I feel that we have been living our lives on aeroplanes travelling over and back to the US and out of suitcases with no set familiarity to our lives over the past three years and longer," James explains. Camille adds: "It will provide the time to take stock, immerse ourselves in island life and start the next chapter or new book of living our lives together in one place.”

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Nature

A hard-to-watch experiment demonstrates that babies aren’t naturally afraid of snakes

Letting snakes loose in a room full of babies? Fascinating, but soooo uncomfortable.

Photo credit: Canva

Babies are more curious than afraid when it comes to snakes.

As someone who's been afraid of snakes for as long as I can remember, I've often wondered where that fear came from. I've never been bitten or harmed by a snake. I've had close encounters with rattlesnakes out in the wild, but no actual strikes. I've had friends with pet snakes that were perfectly docile, and I've even held and petted snakes before (with no small amount of trepidation). While I think a healthy respect for snakes is wise, as some can be dangerous or even deadly, my fear goes way beyond that. I know lions, tigers, and bears are dangerous as well, but don't feel like I'm going to jump out of my skin when I see them like I do when I see a snake.

Why, though? Is that reaction something I learned when I was little, or is it an instinctive, evolutionary fear I inherited from my ancestors?

gif of woman reaching out to hold a snake Reality Reaction GIF by Married At First SightGiphy

Theoretically, the question of whether fears are innate or learned can at least somewhat be answered by seeing how babies react to things. Every baby is different, of course, and some are more sensitive to certain things than others, but researchers have found that babies in general do not exhibit a natural fear of snakes. In their infancy, children largely learn what to fear by observing the reactions of the people around them, whether their parents or others have a negative or positive reaction to something. A fear of snakes might develop early on if a caregiver demonstrate that fear themselves. But without observing that, if you put babies in a room with snakes, they won't be afraid.

And yes, we can actually see that theory tested. In an episode of Secret Science on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), a handful of babies sat on the floor surrounded by toys and a couple of well-trained, non-venomous snakes. If you have a fear of snakes, brace yourself but give it a chance—it's as informative and fascinating as it is mortifying.

Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The host's reaction is so relatable, especially the shudders and the gagging. But clearly the babies were unfazed by the serpents slithering around them. One of them even tried to bite the poor snake, for goodness sake. (It hardly seems necessary, but I should probably insert an obligatory disclaimer here: This is a controlled environment with snakes that are known to be safe with handlers right there, so please do not attempt this with any snakes and babies at home.)

Measuring fear in babies is, of course, a bit of a challenge. It's not like an infant can say, "I'm scared," and babies are known to cry or startle for all kinds of reasons that might not be related to whatever stimuli is around them. An analysis of studies done on babies and fear published in the journal Developmental Psychology in 2020 found that babies react more quickly to commonly assumed fear triggers, but the evidence doesn't show that they are actually afraid of them.

Steve Irwin handling two large snakes Steve Irwin Snakes GIF by BustleGiphy

"Most infants are not afraid of snakes, spiders, heights, or strangers," write study authors Vanessa LoBue and Karen E Adolph. "Instead, they differentiate these stimuli from others, they explore these stimuli to learn about them, and they evaluate the meaning of these stimuli relative to the environment. Although fear of snakes/spiders, heights, and strangers might be adaptive in some instances, heightened attention to these stimuli, the ability to perceive affordances for action when presented with these stimuli, and the ability to evaluate their meaning based on context is far more adaptive: These behaviors encourage infants to explore new things while maintaining the flexibility to develop a fear if they discover that a stimulus is truly threatening."

Learning what to fear from caregivers is an important adaptation, not just among humans but among many animal species as well. Rescued baby orangutans had to be taught to fear snakes by human caregivers at Borneo Orangutan Survival, for instance. Snakes are actually dangerous sometimes, so it's wise to instill some sense of fear of snakes in the wild.

Learning to fear something fear-worthy is a tricky business for humans, though. People are complex and an overreaction might lead to an irrational anxiety response rather than a healthy fear. We may have the cognitive abilities to understand the context and circumstances in which fear is warranted or not, but that doesn't mean we are always able to access those abilities in the face of a fight, flight, or freeze response.

Keeping fear in the reasonable realm is important, and knowing that babies start off without fear of snakes might help inform the way we should react in front of them in order for them to learn the wisdom of fear without it going too far.

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Science

Crows are shockingly smart. Here’s how to make friends with one in four steps.

All it takes is a little food and patience.

via Krari The Crow/YouTube

How to befriend a crow.

When it comes to keeping birds as pets, people usually think about parrots or canaries. Nobody ever considers having a crow. But research has shown that crows are incredibly clever, curious, and self-aware.

They recognize the faces of people they like or don’t like, have the ability to use tools, and can even mimic human speech. Looking to experience the magic of crows yourself? A YouTube user named Kräri The Crow from Germany made a video on how you can befriend the crows in your neighborhood in four easy steps. All it takes is “some food and some patience."

1. Find a pair of crows

Crows tend to live in areas populated by humans, so chances are there are crows in your neighborhood. The best place to start is to find a pair with a fixed territory that you see on a regular basis. That way, you're cultivating a relationship with the same animal day after day and you can "slowly get to know each other."

2. Offer food

Crows will eat just about anything from insects to invertebrates to meat. They also enjoy nuts, worms, and vegetables. If you offer the food in the same place at the same time of day, you'll establish a routine.

3. Be mindful

When interacting with the crow, make sure they aren't anxious or displaying signs that they are prepared to fly away at any moment. Approach the birds with an open, indirect gaze so as to not cause alarm. Sit quietly while you wait for the bird to approach and avoid quick movements.

4. Let the birds come to you

This requires patience. The crow will be shy at first, but they know you better than you think. They will remember your face and your kindness. Give them a chance to observe you and earn your trust.

A the end of the video, Kräri The Crow reminds everyone that while we should make friends with crows, they are supposed to live free in the skies and not be stuck in a cage.

If you succeeded in befriending a feathered genius, tell your new crow friend we say hi!

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Nature

Prison in Brazil uses geese to deter prisoners from escaping and it seems to be working

Guard geese might be a game changer.

Photo credit: Canva

Prison in Brazil ditches guard dogs for a gaggle of geese

Being in prison is not supposed to be a vacation. Most people in prison are there because they broke the law following some poor choices in their lives. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate you so you can be reintegrated into society given a second chance at life but some people are a little impatient on their release date.

As one can imagine, escaping from prison is frowned upon and results in more prison time when you get caught. To deter prisoners from escaping, most penitentiaries have a guard tower, guard dogs and razor blade wire on the top of the fencing. But a prison in Brazil is trying something a little different to keep overzealous prisoners inside the walls of the building until their release date.

They replaced their guard dogs with geese. Yes, those waddling feather dusters that honk and bite if you get too close. It would be easy to believe that a gaggle of geese would be less of a deterrent than a few large barking dogs but the strategy seems to be paying off. Anyone who has ever encountered a goose in the wild would probably wager that an angry goose is much more intimidating than a dog.

Shocked The Goose GIF by Bare Tree MediaGiphy

The geese have been part of the prison's defense system for more than ten years. They're respected as colleagues to the prison guards who care for them.

"It's never happened but if someone tried to escape, the geese would go crazy. They would get our attention without a doubt," prison officer Marcos Coronetti tells TRT World.

Sao Pedro de Alcantra Penitentiary is the only prison in the entire country that uses geese instead of dogs to deter escape. They've found that the geese are much less expensive to maintain than guard dogs. The honking water fouls also require much less attention, training and vet visits than the canines they replaced. Geese don't require you to go out and play fetch or to keep up with scent tracking training. There's also no need to teach geese specific alert barks so humans know if someone is attempting to escape.

Miss Piggy Waiting GIF by Muppet WikiGiphy

"They're not expensive. They make much more of a ruckus than the dogs and they have no time off. They are far better prepared than dogs for this job of surveillance," Coronetti says.

These particular geese are sentinel geese and were domesticated for the purpose of essentially being home alarm systems. Of course the prison doesn't rely solely on their feathered guards to keep the inmates within the walls of the prison. They have cameras, guards and other mechanisms typical in any prison to aid in maintaining the prison population but unlike the humans, the geese don't take shifts. They work around the clock, ready to squawk and flap at the first sign on unexpected movement.

On The Road Family GIF by Tierpark BerlinGiphy

People think this is a fantastic idea though it may have sounded a bit unorthodox at first, with one person writing, "My respect for the guy who had the idea and the courage to talk other people into using geese as part of prison defenses. That's one hell of a 'Now, hear me out....'"

Another commenter chuckles, "Man this is hilarious and practical hahah - they're even called sentinel geese."

One person writes, "Another fun fact. Geese can't be bribed with food over time like dogs can. Making them incorruptible. That alone should give prisoners goose bumps at night."

One goose owner concedes that geese are great at alerting saying, "We have geese. They are so territorial. If they see people, they quack so loudly. Even if they see you everyday, you can't really stop them from quacking if they see you."

Who knew geese could be such great alarm system. Maybe there will be more prisons following suit, especially when there's a chance of saving a good bit of money on vet bills and training programs. All they need now is their own little badges and guard towers to add to the cuteness factor for their seriously adorable jobs.

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Science

See what researchers found when they tested a bottle of Fiji Water against a glass of tap water.

Is bottled water REALLY all that bad?

via Free Stock Photos

A young woman drinking bottled water outdoors before exercising.

Here are six facts from the video above by The Story of Stuff Project that I'll definitely remember next time I'm tempted to buy bottled water.

The Story of Bottled Waterwww.youtube.com

1. Bottled water is more expensive than tap water (and not just a little).

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

A Business Insider column noted that two-thirds of the bottled water sold in the United States is in individual 16.9-ounce bottles, which comes out to roughly $7.50 per gallon. That's about 2,000 times higher than the cost of a gallon of tap water.

And in an article in 20 Something Finance, G.E. Miller investigated the cost of bottled versus tap water for himself. He found that he could fill 4,787 20-ounce bottles with tap water for only $2.10! So if he paid $1 for a bottled water, he'd be paying 2,279 times the cost of tap.

2. Bottled water could potentially be of lower quality than tap water.

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

Fiji Water ran an ad campaign that was pretty disparaging about the city of Cleveland. Not a wise move. The city ordered a test of the snooty brand's water and found that Fiji Water contained levels of arsenic that weren't seen in the city's water supply.

How was that possible? Sarah Goodman of the New York Times explains:

" Bottled water manufacturers are not required to disclose as much information as municipal water utilities because of gaps in federal oversight authority. Bottom line: The Food and Drug Administration oversees bottled water, and U.S. EPA is in charge of tap water. FDA lacks the regulatory authority of EPA."

3. The amount of bottled water we buy every week in the U.S. alone could circle the globe five times!

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

That sounded like it just had to be impossible, so we looked into it. Here's what our fact-checkers found:

"According to the video, ' People in the U.S. buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week.' National Geographic says for 2011, bottled water sales hit 9.1 billion gallons (roughly 34 billion liters).

A 'typical' water bottle is a half-liter, so that's about 68 billion bottles per year. Divided by 52 weeks would be a little over 1 billion bottles of water sold per week in the U.S. Because that's based on a smaller 'typical' bottle size, it seems reasonable that a half billion bottles a week could be accurate.

The Earth is about 131.5 million feet around, so yep, half a billion bottles of varying sizes strung end-to-end could circle the Earth five times."

4. Paying for bottled water makes us chumps.

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

Beverage companies have turned bottled water into a multibillion-dollar industry through a concept known as manufactured demand. Bottled water advertisements used a combination of scare tactics (Tap water bad!) and seduction (From the purest mountain streams EVER!) to reel us in.

Well, we now know their claims about the superior quality of bottled water are mostly bogus. And research shows that anywhere from a quarter to 45% of all bottled water comes from the exact same place as your tap water (which, to reiterate, is so cheap it's almost free).

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

5. Bottled water is FILTHY.

It takes oil — lots of it — to make plastic bottles. According to the video, the energy in the amount of oil it takes to make the plastic water bottles sold in the U.S. in one year could fuel a million cars. That's not even counting the oil it takes to ship bottled water around the world.

And once we've guzzled our bottled water, up to 80% of the empty bottles end up in landfills or noxious-gas-producing incinerators. The rest is either recycled or shipped to countries like India where poor people without environmental and labor protections have to deal with it.

On top of all that, the process of manufacturing plastic bottles is polluting public water supplies, which makes it easier for bottled water companies to sell us their expensive product.

6. There are 750 million people around the world who don't have access to clean water.

Photo by H2O for Life.

A child dies every minute from a waterborne disease. And for me, that's the core of what makes bottled water so evil.

The video wraps by comparing buying bottled water to smoking while pregnant. That may sound extreme, but after learning everything I just did about the bottled water industry, I can't disagree.

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

If you're properly disgusted, here are a few ways you can help destroy the bottled water industry:

Don't buy bottled water. Get a reusable water bottle. The savings will add up.
Rally your schools, workplaces, and communities to ban bottled water.
Demand that your city, state, and federal governments invest in better water infrastructure.

This article originally appeared 10 years ago.

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Nature

Here's the first ever footage of a baby sperm whale nursing from its mother

How baby sperm whales nurse has been a scientific mystery for decades.

National Geographic/YouTube

We know that mammals feed their young with milk from their own bodies, and we know that whales are mammals. But the logistics of how some whales make breastfeeding happen has been a bit of a mystery for scientists. Such has been the case with sperm whales.

Sperm whales are uniquely shaped, with humongous, block-shaped heads that house the largest brains in the animal world. Like other cetaceans, sperm whale babies rely on their mother's milk for sustenance in their first year or two. And also like other cetaceans, a sperm whale mama's nipple is inverted—it doesn't stick out from her body like many mammals, but rather is hidden inside a mammary slit.

Most whale and dolphin babies nudge the mammary slit to expose the nipple, allowing them to "suckle." A sperm whale baby's head and mouth aren't really designed for suckling in the traditional sense, obviously, as its massive nose protrudes over its much smaller lower jaw. But even in the whale sense of mom shooting milk into a baby's mouth, it's been unclear how it works for sperm whales due to their oddly shaped heads. Photos and observations have led researchers to believe that the mother whale expresses milk into the water for the baby to ingests outside of her body, but the real mechanics haven't been clearly understood.

With the proliferation of underwater photography and filmography, it may seem strange that we don't have more nursing whale evidence to examine, but because baby whales can't breathe and nurse at the same time, nursing events are usually quite short. Even being in the right place at the right time to observe a whale nursing is rare, much less capturing it on film.

A four-part documentary series from National Geographic has provided, for the first time, film footage of a sperm whale baby nursing. It shows how the baby actually inserting its lower jaw into the mother's mammary slit, and the milk—which contains ten times more fat than human milk and is the consistency of yogurt—shooting directly into the baby whale's mouth.

Sperm Whale Suckles | National Geographicwww.youtube.com

The documentary series containing this footage, "Secrets of the Whales," was conceived of by National Geographic Explorer and photographer Brian Skerry and follows the stories of five different whale species—narwhals, humpbacks, belugas, sperm whales, and orcas. It was filmed in 24 locations around the world and took three years to make. Produced by award-winning filmmaker and conservationist James Cameron (of "Titanic" and "Avatar" fame) and narrated by award-winning actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver, the series is sure to please whale lovers and nature lovers alike.

In addition to sperm whale babies breastfeeding, the docuseries shows how beluga whales name themselves so groups can keep track of each other, how baby belugas share their moms' call signs, how 30,000 humpbacks travel together from Australia to Antarctica and use breeches to talk to each other, and how a beluga pod adopted a narwhal into their bod—apparently the first ever cross-species adoption ever recorded.

Executive Producer James Cameron called the series a "challenging, daunting project" in a SXSW Conference panel last month."It's also so important for people to understand and for this film to illuminate how these creatures think, how they feel, what their emotion is like, what their society is like," he said, "because we won't protect what we don't love."

The series premiers on streaming service Disney+ on Earth Day, April 22.

Secrets of the Whales | Official Trailer | Disney+www.youtube.com

The filmmakers hope that by sharing with people the unique identities of the whales they followed, they can inspire people to think about how these magnificent mammals can be better protected.

"It's inescapable that they're being poisoned by us, that they're being deafened by us, or their behaviors, all of their feeding strategies and mating strategies and reproductive strategies are being dismantled by all of this noise from shipping channels and military sonars and all that," Cameron said. "They're going to continue to decline. The right whales are down to about 300…We barely understand these animals, so I think we have to, as a society, we have to think about doing it better."

Indeed we do.

This article originally appeared four years ago.

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Animals & Wildlife

Turns out menopause might be an evolutionary trait to ensure the survival of a species

Only a few mammals live beyond child bearing years and human females are one of them.

Photo credit: Canva

Menopause might be evolutionary for human survival

Menopause can seem like one of those unfair things that only happen to those born with female reproductive systems. It's just one more thing to add to the list of things that those born of the opposite sex don't have to deal with. Menstrual cycles, hormonal and physical changes through pregnancy, the pain and recovery of childbirth, the pause in your career while caring for an infant, only to hit crescendo with menopause.

All those hormones that helped keep you balanced go careening off a cliff in the endocrine system. The whole process can feel unnecessary for those forced to experience it but there may be a reason menopause exists. Scientists have studied the phenomenon of menopause across different species. Turns out not every female animal goes through the process of shutting down reproductive organs.

For most animals, they reproduce until death, only experiencing menopause if there's something medically wrong or they're kept in captivity. Only three species of mammals live for a significant amount of time post reproductive years, orcas, short-finned pilot whales and humans. This revelation is what spurred "the grandmother hypothesis," which hypothesizes that these female mammal species live longer to ensure survival of the species.

blue and white whales Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

Both species of whales as well as humans assist their daughters in caring for their children. This allows the daughter to have more children, furthering the respective species. Yes, even whales help take care of their grandchildren by providing them food, which frees up their mother to reproduce sooner.

The Grandmother Effect, a 2009 study published in the National Library of Medicine shares, "women who remained vigorous beyond their fertile years may have enhanced their reproductive success by providing care for their grandchildren. This care would have enabled their daughters to resume reproduction sooner, endowing them with greater lifetime fertility. Genes of grandmothers possessing such old-age vigor would be more likely to persist in subsequent generations."

Short-finned Pilot Whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus) | Flickrwww.flickr.com

There were studies done on chimps as well since they're the closest animal to humans and the results were surprising. The majority of chimpanzees reproduce until death but Ngogo chimps seem to go through menopause around the same age as humans, 50. Ngogo chimps live several years after reproducing but unlike humans and whales, they have no interest in helping raise their grandchildren. In fact, the daughters move away from their mothers once they reach maturity.

Though the study spanned from 1995-2016 to collect accurate data through urine analysis of reproductive hormones, scientists point out that menopause may not naturally occur in Ngogo chimps. While the chimps are technically wild, they live in the Kibale National Park in Uganda. They are not hunted by prey, have an unnatural access to quality foods including more meat. Outside of the national park, nearby chimps don't live beyond 50 while the ones within the park live into their 60s.

woman wearing multicolored blanket hugging the baby Photo by Rahul Vaidya on Unsplash

The Ngogo chimps living an unnaturally long life inside the national park may explain why their familial behavior differs from those of humans and the two whale species. One study outside of the Demographic and hormonal evidence for menopause in wild chimpanzees attempts to debunk the grandmother hypothesis which shows nearly all mammals living beyond child bearing years but other scientists dispute their findings as all the animals studied were living in captivity, which greatly impacts lifespan.

In the 2018 study published in Ecology and Evolution, their study of 52 mammals holds firm that only three live beyond menopause, with humans spending 40-70% of their lives post menopause. So, though the grandmother hypothesis is still just that as scientists continue to look for further evidence, it may just be true. Humans have evolved to experience menopause to help further the species and since women live longer than men on average, it doesn't seem like a far leap. No pressure or anything, grandmas. No pressure at all. Just the survival of the human race, no biggie.

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