back to article Do you know a chimp who's feeling doleful? Mid-life crisis, probably

Boffins investigating the feelings of hundreds of chimpanzees, orangutans and varied great apes say that the creatures get depressed in their middle years just as humans - perhaps especially human males - do. They consider that this affirms Charles Darwin's famous dictum to the effect that if we would seek to understand …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How about

    Some old furniture to smash up?

  2. Captain Hogwash
    Thumb Up

    RE: "50-year-old men ... absconding with waitresses"

    Less than 4 years to go. I can't wait.

    1. Graham Marsden
      Happy

      Re: RE: "50-year-old men ... absconding with waitresses"

      I'm 47, I've already got the motorbike, now all I need to do is find the waitress..

  3. Santa from Exeter
    Devil

    Scourges

    'it could also one day eliminate such social scourges as 50-year-old men on powerful motorbikes'

    50 year old men on powerful motorbikes are much less of a scourge than 20 year olds on the same bikes and both are less of a scourge that spotty teenagers in 'souped up' Novas!

    Here's the car icon again :-)

  4. Graham Dawson Silver badge

    I always figured the mid-life crisis kicked in around the end of a pre-agricultural human's typical lifespan. In the grand scheme, the ability for the majority of humans to live into old age is a very recent phenomenon; our bodies are adapted to a lifespan of about 40 to 50 years and start to fail in increasingly obvious ways after that age. The depression only seems natural in that case. We'd be subconsciously, but intimately aware that our body is reaching a lifespan limit that our species has experienced for millennia and as a result we'd get all existential and depressed, but not really understand why. Those humans that live longer would cheer up, because they might just live forever.

    Oops.

    1. ravenviz Silver badge
      Trollface

      Speak for yourself, I'm in great shape! And my 22 year old girlfriend says so as well!

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'd always assumed the U-shaped curve of happiness corresponded with the inverted U-shaped curve of intelligence. When you reach middle age you're at the perfect balance of brain power, which declines after your 20's, and experience, which increases with age. At middle age you're in the position to see how crap the world is and how little you can do about it. Everything before and after that is blissful ignorance.

  5. IronSteve

    Studying the Apes in zoos....I'd be interested to see the correlation with humans in Jail

  6. ravenviz Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Mid 20's crisis

    So who are all these waitresses and receptionists running off with middle age men?

    And where can I meet them?

    1. LordHighFixer
      Trollface

      Re: Mid 20's crisis

      They are all in secondlife (yes, it is still running), but unfortunately, they are also middle aged men.

  7. JimC

    But, but, but

    I've had motorcycles and electric guitars ever since I was 18 and 15 respectively, and in the last 40 years I've never managed to persuade a waitress to run off with me, not even Sharyn at Blues...

  8. DanceMan
    Holmes

    death before old age is quite rare

    See icon

  9. Lars Silver badge
    Coat

    As far as I am concerned it's about not having made even my first million at 50 and then realizing a bit later I can have a waitress and receptionists all the same. Now, there must be better explanations. Optimism as the last resource, death of on optimist considered rare. We need to study our grand fathers some more, perhaps they speak to us. Death in prison will that matter. Shit.

  10. The Indomitable Gall
    IT Angle

    IT angle...?

    Come on, El Reg -- where's the IT angle? I'll give you a clue: Belize. Running from the cops with someone young enough to be his granddaughter. How could you have missed it?

  11. Graham Marsden
    Coat

    I have an Orang-Utan here...

    ... who just wants to say "Oook!!"

  12. tony2heads

    Kids

    I suspect that it corresponds to when our offspring no longer need us, so part of our role in life has deaparted

  13. geoffkryten
    Coat

    Stop saying Boffins!

    Stop please. Even in the U.K. it can't be okay to use that word exclusively, instead of scientists, researchers, etc. It can't be necessary to use the word boffins in every single science article. At least try one article without the word, and see how it feels. It will feel really good to me.

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