Projects per year
Abstract
It has been suggested that non-human primates can respond to deceased
conspecifics in ways that suggest they experience psychological states
not unlike humans, some of which could indicate they exhibit a notion of
death. Here, we report long-term demographic data from two East African
chimpanzee groups. During a combined 40-year observation period, we
recorded 191 births of which 68 died in infancy, mostly within the first
year. We documented the post-mortem behaviour of the mothers and
describe nine occasions where Budongo chimpanzee mothers carried infants
for 1–3 days after their death, usually until the body started to
decompose. We also observed three additional cases of extended carrying
lasting for more than 2 weeks, one of which was followed by the unusual
extended carrying of an object and another which lasted 3 months. In
each case, the corpses mummified. In addition, we report four instances
of recurring dead-infant carrying by mothers, three of whom carried the
corpse for longer during the second instance. We discuss these
observations in view of functional hypotheses of dead-infant carrying in
primates and the potential proximate mechanisms involved in this
behaviour.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Primates |
Volume | First Online |
Early online date | 10 Jul 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 10 Jul 2022 |
Keywords
- Thanatology
- Death]
- Infant corpse carrying
- Pan troglodytes
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Dive into the research topics of 'Dead-infant carrying by chimpanzee mothers in the Budongo Forest'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Cat Hobaiter: H2020 ERC Starting Grant 2018 GESTURALORIGINS
Hobaiter, C. (PI)
1/03/19 → 28/02/24
Project: Fellowship
Datasets
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Dead-infant carrying by chimpanzee mothers in the Budongo Forest (dataset)
Soldati, A. (Creator), OSF, 11 Jul 2022
https://osf.io/aqcg8/?view_only=7e47cac43e1b42b7bef5f76d01cae4ec
Dataset