Do Apes Have Mid LIfe Crisis

It turns out Apes have a mid life crisis just like humans. No, they don't go and buy a car, but some do trade for a trophy Ape....if you will. This study could prove that this a evolutionary and not something that is society driven.

Most humans, according to research, have happiness in their life in a U shape. Happy in their 20's and 30's less happy around 40 or 50, then happier again.

Professor Andrew Oswald studied 508 apes and thousands of humans. Both studies had almost the same outcome.

"In all three groups we find evidence that well-being is lowest in chimpanzees and orangutans at an age that roughly corresponds to midlife in humans," co-author Alex Weiss, a psychologist at Edinburgh University, told the Guardian. "On average, well-being scores are lowest when animals are around 30 years old." (An ape's lifespan is about half of a human's.)

"We hoped to understand a famous scientific puzzle: why does human happiness follow an approximate U-shape through life? We ended up showing that it cannot be because of mortgages, marital breakup, mobile phones, or any of the other paraphernalia of modern life. Apes also have a pronounced midlife low, and they have none of those," Oswald said.

So, as Apes evolve, we will see them picking our a Jag, trophy Ape in tow, buying a motorcyle, and going skydiving with the other apes. Then picking out the tree closest to the bananas.