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Sterilization and contraception increase lifespan across vertebrates

Nature volume 649, pages 1264–1272 (2026) Cite this article

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Abstract

Reproduction is hypothesized to constrain lifespan1,2 and contribute to sex differences in ageing3,4,5. Various sterilization and contraception methods inhibit reproduction, but predictions differ for how these influence survival, depending on sex5, how sex hormones are affected4 and species life history6. Here, using data from mammalian species housed in zoos and aquariums worldwide, we show that ongoing hormonal contraception and permanent surgical sterilization are associated with increased life expectancy. These effects occur in both males and females, although the sexes are differently protected from specific causes of death. Evidence of improved survival in males is also restricted to castration, with stronger effects occurring after pre-pubertal surgery. Complementary meta-analyses of published data reveal improved survival with sterilization across vertebrates and increased healthspan in gonadectomized rodents. Improved survival occurs in laboratory and wild environments, and with female sterilization approaches that either remove the ovaries or leave them intact. Reported increases in survival in castrated men7,8,9 resemble the effects in other species, whereas survival of women is slightly decreased after permanent surgical sterilization. Thus the hormonal drive to reproduce constrains adult survival across vertebrates, regardless of the environment in which an animal resides.

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Fig. 1: Manipulations that inhibit reproduction are associated with increased mean lifespan and reduced mortality from different causes of death across zoo-housed mammal species.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 2: Changes in survival in response to different types of contraception in mammalian species kept in zoos.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 3: Meta-analyses on data from published studies reveal that permanent methods of sterilization are associated with improved survival across vertebrates and improved healthspan in rodents.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 4: Tests of the moderating effects of sex, gonad removal, study design and environmental factors in influencing the survival effects of sterilization from published studies.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 5: Early-life sterilization provides the greatest survival benefits in male vertebrates.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

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Data availability

All data needed to reproduce the conclusions are available in the supplementary materials are publicly available at GitHub (https://github.com/itchyshin/lifespan_contraception), and are archived at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17333443)25; the extracted data from primary sources used in the meta-analyses are also included with these. Raw data used for survival analysis to estimate life expectancies and ageing rates (Species360 data use approval no. 98486) for analysis of zoo-housed species cannot be publicly shared, as Species360 is the custodian (not the owner) of their members’ data. However, the individual survival curves for each species and contraception comparison can be found in Supplementary Figs. 1–4. Raw data are accessible from Species360 through research request applications (form available at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1znoy62VEkDlhAp_0RfEvF7Zsx03g4W5AlppJHqo3_WQ/viewform?edit_requested=true&pli=1).  Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All code need to reproduce the conclusions is available in the supplementary materials, is publicly available at GitHub (https://github.com/itchyshin/lifespan_contraception), and is also archived at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17333443)25.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the authors of previous research who provided additional data and clarification about their studies, including F. Brotcorne, S. Deleuze, G. Giraud, D. Waters and M. Tidière. S.N. and M.L. were supported by ARC (the Australian Research Council) Discovery grants (DP210100812 and DP230101248); S.N. was also supported by the Canada Research Excellence Chair Program (CERC-2022-00074). J.S. was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant P01-AG031719 (primary investigator: J. W. Vaupel; supporting principal investigators: F.C. and D.A.C.). This research was made possible by the worldwide information network of zoos and aquariums, which are members of Species360 and is authorized by Species360 research data use and grant agreement 98486.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Fernando Colchero, Shinichi Nakagawa

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Neuroendocrinology and Department of Anatomy, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Michael Garratt & Christine Neyt

  2. Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Malgorzata Lagisz & Shinichi Nakagawa

  3. Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

    Johanna Staerk & Fernando Colchero

  4. Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Johanna Staerk & Dalia A. Conde

  5. Aging and Metabolism Research Program, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, OK, USA

    Michael B. Stout & José V. V. Isola

  6. EAZA Reproductive Management Group, Chester Zoo, Chester, UK

    Veronica B. Cowl & Susan L. Walker

  7. European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Veronica B. Cowl

  8. Species360, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Nannette Driver-Ruiz

  9. AZA Reproductive Management Center, Saint Louis Zoo, St Louis, MO, USA

    Ashley D. Franklin, Monica M. McDonald & David M. Powell

  10. Department of Reproductive and Behavioral Sciences, Saint Louis Zoo, St Louis, MO, USA

    David M. Powell

  11. Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Évolutive UMR 5558, CNRS, Université Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

    Jean-Michel Gaillard & Jean-François Lemaître

  12. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Fernando Colchero

  13. Collobration for Open Science and Synthesis in Ecology and Evolution, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Shinichi Nakagawa

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  1. Michael Garratt
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  2. Malgorzata Lagisz
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Contributions

M.G. is the lead author. He co-conceived the project, led the writing of the manuscript, helped to search for and extract data in the meta-analysis, and guided the data analysis and creation of figures. S.N. co-conceived the project, led the data analysis and helped to write the paper. F.C. co-conceived the project, led the data extraction and initial analysis of the zoological dataset and helped to write the paper. M.L. oversaw the meta-analysis of published data and helped to search for and extract the data. J.S. helped to extract the zoological data, created the figures and helped to write the manuscript. C.N. led the search process and helped to extract the published data on changes in lifespan and healthspan with sterilization. M.B.S. helped to search for data on changes in lifespan with sterilization and helped to write the paper. J.V.V.I. helped to search for data on changes in lifespan with sterilization. V.B.C. provided information on types of contraception used in zoos and helped to interpret the data. N.D.-R. provided information on types of contraception used in zoos and helped to interpret the data. A.D.F. provided information on types of contraception used in zoos and helped to interpret the data. M.M.M. provided information on types of contraception used in zoos and helped to interpret the data. D.M.P. provided, and led the search for, information on types of contraception used in zoos and helped to interpret the data. S.L.W. provided information on types of contraception used in zoos and helped to interpret the data. J.-M.G. helped to interpret the data and write the manuscript. D.A.C. co-conceived the project, helped gain access to the data and contributed to data interpretation. J.-F.L. co-conceived the project, helped with data extraction and writing the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Garratt.

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Nature thanks Bérénice Benayoun, Alan Cohen, Sha Jiang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer review reports are available.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Causes of death for male and female zoo-housed animals where necropsies had been undertaken.

Data are shown according to sex and each major type of mortality. Bars show the percentage of individuals within a mortality class that died due to a specific condition. The sample size (n) available for each major type of mortality is shown in brackets and corresponds to the pooled sample size of non-contracepted individuals from across mammalian species.

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Extended Data Fig. 2 Tests of moderating factors split according to sex where applicable.

Effect sizes are split into responses in males and females where allocation to and maintenance of animals in different conditions was controlled or not (a), whether sham manipulations are conducted in the control group (b) and whether animals are kept in the wild or non-wild conditions (c). The size of each circle indicates the precision estimate for each effect size. The centre dot shows the meta-analytic effect size and bars show 95% confidence intervals (thick lines) and 95% prediction intervals (thin lines). k is the number of effect sizes within each group, with the number of studies from which these data are taken shown in brackets.

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Extended Data Fig. 3 Changes in male lifespan in response to surgical sterilization when conducted before (Pre) or after (Post) sexual maturity.

The size of each circle indicates the precision estimate for each effect size. The centre dot shows the meta-analytical effect size and bars show 95% confidence intervals (thick lines) and 95% prediction intervals (thin lines). k is the number of effect sizes within each group. Pre-pubertal sterilization leads to a greater increase in survival relative to post-pubertal sterilization (β = 0.054, 95% CI = [0.016, 0.092]).

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Extended Data Fig. 4 Effects of male castration and female ovariectomy on individual tests of healthspan in mice and rats.

Each row shows the meta-analytical effect size (centre dot) and 95% confidence intervals (bars) for each healthspan test, separated by sex. Data are collated from 194 individual effect sizes from 48 different studies (see Supplementary Information for the complete dataset).

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Extended Data Fig. 5 Consequences of male castration for sex differences in life expectancy.

In (a) a schematic shows the hypothesized change in the sex difference in lifespan (upper) if castration has the greatest effects on lifespan in populations where males have a shorter lifespan than females. The bottom schematic shows the hypothetical change that would occur to the absolute variance in lifespan between sexes (i.e. the absolute gap in survival time between males and females, irrespective of whether males or females live longer) with castration if the presence of male gonads contributes to sex differences in lifespan. Each dot represents a hypothetical sex difference in survival for a given species (e.g. intact male mean survival/intact female mean survival), and how this sex difference would change when males are castrated. If males have a shorter lifespan than females in some species because male-specific gonadal hormones cause them to have poorer survival in these instances, then males of these species should show the biggest increase in survival with castration and the sex difference in survival would become closer to zero. Similarly, the absolute sex gap in survival should also be reduced because castration will improve male survival where males live shorter than females but will have less impact where males and females normally have a similar lifespan (i.e. where intact male survival is similar to intact female survival). If male castration increases survival irrespective of the sex difference then the variance in lifespan will not change. In (b), the log response ratio (lnRR, upper) and absolute lnRR (i.e. the absolute gap in survival, lower) is shown for male/female comparisons of survival from the zoo dataset where comparable data was available for surgically sterilized male life expectancy, and non-contracepted male and female life expectancy. The centre dot shows the meta-analytic effect size, with bars showing 95% confidence intervals (thick lines) and 95% prediction intervals (thin lines) for each comparison. This demonstrates that there is substantial variation in the sex difference in lifespan across species, but that there is no change in the overall sex difference in lifespan across species when males are surgically sterilized (upper). Similarly, there is no reduction in the overall sex gap in life expectancy (i.e. the total variance in lifespan between males and females, irrespective of the direction) when males are surgically sterilized. Each dot represents a different population, with the size of each dot corresponding to the precision of the estimate; k is the number of effect sizes within each comparison. In (c), the log response ratio (lnRR, upper) and absolute lnRR (i.e. the absolute gap in survival, lower) is shown for male/female comparisons of survival from previously published data used in the meta-analysis for castrated male survival, male non-castrated survival and female non-contracepted survival for a particular population. The centre dot shows the meta-analytic effect size, with bars showing the 95% confidence intervals (thick lines) and 95% prediction intervals (thin lines) for each comparison. Comparing non-contracepted males and females, there is substantial variation in lifespan between the sexes but no overall sex bias in survival. However, castration of males leads to a sex bias in survival, with castrated males having higher survival on average compared to females. This is because castration increases male survival irrespective of the underlying sex difference in survival between non-contracepted individuals (i.e. survival of males is increased even where there is no sex difference in survival) and there is no overall reduction in the absolute sex gap in survival (lower) when males are castrated. Each dot represents a different population, with the size of each dot corresponding to the precision of the estimate; k is the number of effect sizes within each comparison.

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Extended Data Fig. 6 The change in life expectancy with male sterilization is not significantly correlated with testes mass after controlling for body mass.

Data show the relationship between the effect size for change in life-expectancy with male sterilization and log transformed testes mass across mammal species. Dashed lines are the 95% CIs and dotted lines 95% PIs. k is the number of effect sizes. The relationship was analysed using meta-analysis and included log-transformed body weight as a covariate. Estimate for testes mass = 0.0261, CI = [−0.0119, 0.0641].

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information (download PDF )

This contains Supplementary Figs. 1–4 and Supplementary Tables 1–10

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Garratt, M., Lagisz, M., Staerk, J. et al. Sterilization and contraception increase lifespan across vertebrates. Nature 649, 1264–1272 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09836-9

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