Successful Aging in the Forest: How wild chimpanzees can help us understand the evolution of human aging

Join us for a conversation with Melissa Emery Thompson, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Recent research has revealed that despite shorter life expectancies, humans in small-scale subsistence populations exhibit surprisingly good health, suggesting that some debilitating diseases of aging may be novel products of industrialized environments. This research highlights an urgency to look deeper in our evolutionary past to understand how we age today. I will discuss emerging findings from the first longitudinal study to examine aging in our closest evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees, in their natural environment. Attendees may be interested in reading articles in a recent theme issue on primate aging: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2020/375/1811.

After the talk, perspectives on how the research applies in a clinical setting will be presented by Arun Karlamangla, Professor of Medicine with a specialty in geriatric medicine at UCLA.

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