New research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Turku reveals that female mountain gorillas, like humans and a handful of other mammals, can live long past the birth of their last offspring. Drawing on over three decades of life-history and behavioural data, the study shows that nearly one-third of adult female mountain gorillas from four wild groups in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda stop reproducing yet survive for more than a decade afterwards, spending at least a quarter of their adult lives in a post-reproductive phase. This discovery represents a critical addition to our understanding of hominid life history evolution.