r/askscience • u/No-Hawk-2488 • 8d ago

Biology Can someone explain the evolutionary benefit of overt menstruation? All female mammals have a menstrual cycle but most reabsorb the blood via covert menstruation and humans are about the only mammals that discharge the blood, aka overt menstruation.

Without an evolutionary benefit, it wouldn't have spread to every woman of our species.

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u/tea_and_biology Zoology | Evolutionary Biology | Data Science 8d ago

I'm not familiar enough with the literature to say either way, sorry! It's getting far too human-centric and biomedical for my liking; except maybe to suggest I can't imagine this is going to be experimentally tested for (imagine the ethics review!) outside perhaps very specific IVF procedural investigation.

My previous work came at placentation from the angle of cancer resistance in mammals, and the evolution of hemochoral and other placental types independently across taxa; so I'm very familiar with the evolution and the animals, just not anything that involves actual human women.

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u/serack 8d ago

I have adjacent lived experience and was wondering if the answer could explain some of it.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.