Female animals who do not all reproduce apart from humans?

[Splodgetastic]

Just that - are there any and what is their role? I know there are insects and whale species who go through menopause and have roles such as guarding the colony, helping younger females and showing where food is, but are there species who do not mate or do not reproduce in all cases? Was thinking about it as I approach menopause as a childless woman (and I’m not going to justify being on Mumsnet!) and Google came up with no answer.

You are mistaken if you think only women don't reproduce. You will find infertile individuals in all species. At least it's definitely true of mammals and I assume it happens among other creatures.

Are you specifically interested in mammals?

In wolf packs only the alpha female breeds, if a lower ranking female has a litter and food runs short, the alpha female will kill the other pups to remove any competition.
Low ranking females don't breed at all, they help raise the pups of the high ranking females.

Current thinking is that domestic dogs don't live in packs, but breeders don't let females near each others litters as dominant females will frequently kill pups from other litters.

Bees mostly don’t.

Are you looking for animals that chose not to reproduce as opposed to being infertile?

Sorry posted too soon...

As I believe that in some wolves only females with a certain status are "permitted' to breed?

Xpost with BadPenny :)

I think the situation is most common for social animals that have to hunt their food; so lions, African hunting dogs, and hyenas also don't all breed.

Meerkats. In meerkat colonies only the alpha female is allowed to have babies. If any other female has babies the alpha female most often kills these babies. Sometimes the alpha pair can even ‘evict’ a pregnant female from the colony.

Bees mostly don’t.

Only queens mate. They do it in one day, often with more than one male, then lay eggs for the rest of their lives, usually never leaving the hive.

We tend to anthropomorphise queens but they aren’t rulers; they’re egg factories.

Genetically they are identical to their non-queen sisters. The difference is brought about because they continue to be fed royal jelly after the first three days of like while their sisters are fed pollen.

Bees are fascinating.

Mole rats have a queen and a few breeding males with the rest being workers

Yes I love bees.

Genuinely fascinated by stuff like this.

Wolves and lions both have few breeding females and many more “aunties”

There are a few cross breeds who are naturally sterile arent there.

Like mules.

Not sure if they are naturally iccouting as well or are all man made "creations"

The menopause question is interesting. In social mammals older females can still have a role raising children so there is so living beyond reproductive age is a useful adaptation.

But how about non-social animals? From an evolutionary point of view is there any mechanism that would extend their life beyond fertility?

Occurring

Unlike spelling on this bloody phone

Wow, so many replies so quickly! No, I’m not just interested in mammals.

Nearly all animals can reproduce until they die. Including social animals. I think it’s basically us and whales isn’t it?

Off for a google!

I went to a chimp reserve once and there was an Infertile female who was apparently grieving for her lack of babies, they gave her a foster baby and she became a lot happier.

Do you mean, erm, child free by choice?

Like being a female mouse and seeing the other mother's pop out one batch of babies one after the other, having over 300 babies and thinking, "fuck that noise, there must be another way?"

Yes I love bees.

Male bees inherit just one set of chromosomes: from their mothers.

So they have no genetic father but they do have a genetic grandfather.

It hurts my head even thinking about that.

Elephants have menopause, I think.

@RiddleyW I was thinking more of the wolf example rather than the bee example in the sense of “choice”.

What do the wolf “aunties” do?

To be morbid, but I don't think we are really meant to live past menopause, we have intervened to (try to) make us live longer. In a natural state we wouldn't live as long as we do.

There's lots of animals where only the alpha couple breed, what's unusual is the amount of time we live beyond the menopause, I'm not sure if captive apes and other long lived zoo mammals go through the menopause?