Female killer whales lead playful sex lives as they age – and are also celebrated for their matriarchal wisdom

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Four years ago, I was thrown for a loop by a wave of strange new symptoms including night sweats, an expanding midsection, dry skin, and a strong and sudden intolerance for noise. I suspected they had something to do with the neurological and physiological changes of perimenopause but was frustrated by the absence of clear answers about what was happening to my middle-aged body. Lacking few nuanced representations of this period of life, I began looking at what midlife looks like elsewhere in nature.

It was inspiring. Trees, for instance, illustrate the capaciousness of midlife: as they mature, they add rings to their ever-expanding trunks. Mature trees in urban areas – those 20 years and up – remove higher levels of air pollution, sequester more carbon from the atmosphere and provide much more leaf area and shade than their younger counterparts.