Molly Webster

The young had higher chances of survival than the whales who had no grandmas or even had grandmas who were premenopausal.

Does that make sense?

So the grandmas who couldn't have babies anymore were more helpful than the grandmas who were still having babies.

Right.

And this actually gave like a lot of support to an idea that people have been thinking about in terms of humans, actually, for a while.

The grandmother hypothesis.

I feel like I hear a lot about the grandmother hypothesis, but I'm not even sure I know how it works.

Yeah, right.

But it's basically what we just learned with the whales.

There's something that makes a lot of, I'll just say as a person with a two-year-old child, like makes a lot of sense to me.

Like, you know, like my mother is just like incredibly helpful and useful.

I mean, that's data point of one.

It's not scientific, but we feel how this is like makes some amount of sense to be true.

So this hypothesis is just like your evolutionary purpose is to be a mom, even if you are no longer being a mom.

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the cultural takeaway.

That's like what most of us think of, if you've ever heard of this before.

But when you look at the whales, it goes way beyond that.

Like the older killer whale female, she's actually kind of running the show.

They play diplomat or keeper of the peace, especially with the younger male whales.

But also they're like hunter-in-chief, leading the pod to find food to feed everybody.