Data on the well-being of apes show that they can experience the same emotional discontent at a midpoint in their lives as humans, also known as a midlife crisis, according to a new study released Monday.

Previous studies revealed that a human's emotional health follows a U-shape between 20 and 70, with the mid- to late-40s marking the bottom. Highs are in a person's youth, lows are in middle age, and the pattern rises again into old age. The latest study revealed that apes resemble the same U-shape pattern humans have regarding happiness, and that the emotional state is not determined by external factors such as marital affairs and electronics.

"We hoped to understand a famous scientific puzzle: why does human happiness follow an approximate U-shape through life?" Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England, said. "We ended up showing that it cannot be because of mortgages, marital breakup, mobile phones, or any of the other paraphernalia of modern life. [Because] apes also have a pronounced midlife low, and they have none of those."

Oswald and other researchers examined data on the well-being of 508 chimpanzees and orangutans from zoos and research centers in the United States, Australia, Canada, Singapore and Japan. Oswald and his team analyzed reports given by caretakers, volunteers and scientists about each ape's mood, the enjoyment gained from socialization, success at achieving goals, "and how the humans would feel about being the ape for a week," according to USA Today.

"Based on all of the other behavioral and developmental similarities between humans, chimpanzees, and orangutans, we predicted that there would be similarities when looking at happiness over the lifespan, too," psychologist Dr Alex Weiss, who was also involved in the study, said. "However, one never knows how these things will turn out, so it's wonderful when they are consistent with findings from so many other areas."