Did man's yearning for young women create the menopause? Research suggests that men may have caused middle-age loss of fertility

Women now have someone to blame for the hot flushes and mood swings of the menopause – men.

Traditionally, scientists believed men tried to mate with young, pre-menopausal women because they were fertile.

But a new study has turned the theory on its head, claiming men actually caused the middle-aged loss of fertility because they have always preferred sleeping with younger women.

Cooling off: Women now have someone to blame for their hot flushes during menopause - men

Professor Rama Singh, from McMaster University in Canada, thinks the menopause was simply evolution’s way of recognising that older women no longer need the ability to have children as men stop wanting to mate with them.

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He said men’s inbuilt predilection for younger females, an inclination which he has dubbed ‘preferential mating’, was to blame for starting the menopause.

The scientist, who is researching ways to prolong women’s fertility, also believes that if countless generations of men hadn’t shown a preference for younger mates then women might now be able to reproduce until they died.

In their prime: Men have always had a predilection for mating with younger women, but new research suggests that might be the cause of and not because of female menopause

And Professor Singh even claimed that if women had favoured young mates and shunned older males, then men might also have developed their own menopause, losing fertility when they lost their appeal as potential breeding partners.

Some women reach the menopause in their 40s, but the average age for the loss of fertility is 52.

Female chimpanzees, our closest animal cousins, only stop being fertile near the end of their lives, typically around the age of 45.

And only two other species – pilot and killer whales – experience a similar type of menopause.

Professor Singh’s research has been published in the journal Public Library of Science Computational Biology.

However the controversial theory has already attracted criticism from other specialists, who have stressed that the reason why women become infertile in middle age is still a mystery.

Dr Maxwell Burton-Chellew, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, dismissed Professor Singh’s theory, calling it ‘plain wrong’.

He said: ‘It argues that the menopause exists in humans because males have a strong preference for younger females.

‘However, this is probably the wrong way round. The human male preference for younger females is likely to be because older females are less fertile.’