What's the biological reason for men to remain virile?

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I posted this in the adult section because my question relates to reproduction.

Women go through menopause and cease to be fertile. Men, provided they retain a functional reproductive system (e.g. prostate and testes) can technically remain capable of fathering children for their entire lifetimes.

I was wondering yesterday, from the standpoint of species propagation as to why a man would need to be able to father children as an extremely elderly person? It makes me think of a scenario where a man was "the last man on earth" which isn't realistic.

From a biological/evolutionary perspective, perhaps I'm missing reasons as to why this is?

If you live to an old age that may be considered a sign of success.

I would ask this question backwards: Why do women have menopause and can't have children after certain age?
I believe the answer is: pregancy is very costly for the organism.
Producing sperm is not.

That men remain virile may not really need explaining. Traits can be retained even when they no longer confer an evolutionary advantage, so long as they are not disadvantageous or are a side-effect of something which is advantageous - and longer duration of being fertile has an obvious evolutionary advantage so long as it doesn't significantly impair survival rates of the resulting offspring.

As magz said, it might be better to ask; why do women pass through the menopause? Although little studied, menopause seems to be very rare in the animal kingdom. So menopause seems a far more anomalous trait than persistent male virility (I use "anomalous" strictly in the context of animal biology as a whole, of course; there's no reason to think that it makes women inferior in any way, and it may be an advantageous adaption.)

The Wikipedia page about menopause is a good introduction to the biology of menopause, and has an extensive list of the various theories about its origins and possible advantages, and what selective pressures may have led to it's evolution.

It is erroneous to assume that men can still reproduce beyond the age where women lose their fertility; they can still ejaculate, but their sperm are incapable of fertilising an egg.

^ Fertility decreases, yes, but plenty of men have fathered children beyond the typical age of female menopause. There is still a qualitative difference at the heart of the question; fertility declines with age in both sexes, but only females have a distinctive cut-off point beyond which basic reproductive functions essentially cease entirely.

Do you mean they're incapable of fertilizing an egg because the woman would not be producing any eggs to fertilize and therefore his fertility is moot? Or do you mean that an elderly man's sperm are incapable of fertilizing an egg?

Early humans didn't live nearly as long as most humans do today and had little to no morals, so men forcing sexual intercourse as many young girls and women as possible was what helped our species to survive. Sadly, modern humans still have the genes that once were beneficial to our survival but the world has changed so much they're ruining our lives and leading to our early extinction.

Yes. I suppose part of the problem is that women have to bear the child and, therefore, it's a greater burden on their bodies.

Close to menopause, women have lower quality babies. Also, men traditionally take the big risks for the group in any emergency, which may leave only a few men to start the next generation. There are also good arguments for the advantages a child gets from having a grandmother involved to help the mother.

When you are asserting that something is erroneous, it's good to get your facts right. As another commenter stated, men (who still have potency) can still father children well into old-age.

You need to learn the difference between a general and a categorical statement (as do most on this site). Although admittedly, I should have been clearer about this.

I do, do I? Well, why don't you school me.

Categorical statement: all men completely lose the ability to fertilize at exactly the same age as women.

General statement: most men, on average, lose all or almost all the ability to fertilize at around about the same age as women.

I could have spelt this out in my previous post, but I didn't see why it should be necessary. Maybe this was naive of me.

Women are pregnant for nine months, technically ten. A woman can only reproduce at the rate of (generally) one off-spring in that period of time. Likewise, they reach menopause and stop reproducing altogether at a fairly young age. Humankind would die out if men didn't have a faster ability to reproduce than women. Men can technically get thousands of women pregnant every month, depending on their libido. They can make thousands of babies in the time an individual woman can make one. There are statistically fewer men on the planet, but each man can make far more babies than a woman -- in order to make up for the disparity in reproduction rates. The age of the man doesn't matter biologically, because their body won't face the physical strain or hormonal stress of pregnancy, childbirth and lactation.

Last edited by IsabellaLinton on 03 Mar 2019, 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Cary Grant fathered a child when he was in his 80s.

Tony Randall fathered a child when he was in his 70s.

I’m 58.....and I’m not taking my chances......