![]() ![]() To avoid being stifled or laughed at, we didn`t even ask the questions, let alone find a way to answer them. The mourning process is not limited to humans, but we are afraid of the old bugaboo of ànthropomorfic thinking.` In the 70`s, when I was writing children`s stories I was not allowed to use athropomorphisms! So afraid to ascribe to other primates anything that remotely looked like human behaviour, we kept our thoughts to ourselves. My focus is switching from humans to other primates and comparing behavioural differences, neurobiology when it is available (ie: fMRI`s) and primate sociobiology. I am a cliical psychologist with two degrees in anthropology. The next day, the mother was no longer observed carrying the infant. After an hour had passed, she took the body over to a group of chimpanzees and watched them investigate. She repeatedly returned and held her fingers against the infant’s face and neck for several seconds. After carrying around the baby’s dead body for more than a day, the mother laid it out on the ground in a clearing. Additional footage shows a female chimpanzee in the aftermath of the death of her 16-month-old infant. Very little is known about how animals other than ourselves-especially nonhuman primates-react to the deaths of those close to them and whether they “mourn,” as we interpret the feeling.īut recently, researchers at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia, where wild-born chimpanzees that have been rescued from illegal trade live in the largest social groups and enclosures in the world, released never-before-seen video of a chimp community reacting to the death of a nine-year-old male. We hope very much it will be the last.Do chimpanzees actually mourn the loss of loved ones similarly to the way that humans do? Some observations of wild chimpanzees have indicated that they do. This was not the first case of human babies being taken by chimps in the Gombe area, but it was the first within the Park and the first involving a habituated chimp of the research community. However, Frodo’s behaviour during this incident seemed more to be part of the natural hunting behaviour of chimpanzees: it seems they can view human babies just as they view the young of other species such as colobus monkeys and baboons, as potential prey. This aspect of his behaviour is in a way like play, but of a rough sort. We are continuing to enforce the safety rules as well as explaining to staff and to visitors what the risks are and how to avoid them.įrodo is not scared of people and sometimes includes them in his displays, by hitting or pushing them, but researchers and Park guides can usually tell by the signs that he is going to do this, and help people to avoid him. The fact that members of the public are allowed to use paths through the park, and the fact that some of those people have not remained alert to the danger from chimps, were contributory factors to this incident. Luckily the male was alone with no other chimps around, and so the researchers were later able to retrieve the baby’s body. When he was next seen, by one of the researchers, he was in a tree and the baby was dead, but after eating only a little portion he left the baby on a branch, descended the tree, and moved away, apparently to avoid the observer. The chimpanzee approached the two women, and at that distance they had no time to run and were too weak to do anything to protect their child, so he took the baby from the girl’s back, and moved off into the forest. They had just crossed a small dry gully, when they came unexpectedly on the alpha male of Kasekela community, Frodo, just 4 metres from the path, where he was feeding on oil-palm fronds on the ground. They were walking on a public footpath which runs through the Park, and about 11:20 am, when they were still about three kilometers away from the research camp at Kasekela, they passed through the forest near the shore at Kahama. She was accompanied by her niece, aged 16, who was carrying the baby. The mother and her baby were coming into Gombe from their village of Mgaraganza which is outside the National Park. A human baby, 14 months old, was kidnapped and killed by an adult male chimpanzee. ![]() At Gombe National Park, Tanzania, a tragic incident occurred on the 15th of May, 2002. ![]()
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