For Chimps, Salt and Pepper Hair Not a Marker of Old Age

Associate Professor of Anthropology Brenda Bradley and PhD candidate Elizabeth Tapanes uncovered significant variation in how chimpanzees, our closest ape relatives, experience pigment loss. While silver strands and graying hair are signs of aging in humans, graying occurs in chimps until they reach midlife and then plateaus as they continue to age, making it an unreliable indicator of age. The study by the researchers from the CCAS Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology was published in the journal PLOS ONE.