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Dead-infant carrying by chimpanzee mothers in the Budongo Forest

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Date
10/07/2022
Author
Soldati, Adrian
Fedurek, Pawel
Crockford, Catherine
Adue, Sam
Akankwasa, John Walter
Asiimwe, Caroline
Asua, Jackson
Atayo, Gideon
Chandia, Boscou
Freymann, Elodie
Fryns, Caroline
Muhumaza, Geresomu
Taylor, Derry
Zuberbühler, Klaus
Hobaiter, Cat
Funder
European Research Council
Grant ID
802719
Keywords
Thanatology
Death]
Infant corpse carrying
Pan troglodytes
BF Psychology
NDAS
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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.
Citation
Soldati , A , Fedurek , P , Crockford , C , Adue , S , Akankwasa , J W , Asiimwe , C , Asua , J , Atayo , G , Chandia , B , Freymann , E , Fryns , C , Muhumaza , G , Taylor , D , Zuberbühler , K & Hobaiter , C 2022 , ' Dead-infant carrying by chimpanzee mothers in the Budongo Forest ' , Primates , vol. First Online . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-022-00999-x
Publication
Primates
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-022-00999-x
ISSN
0032-8332
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
A.S.’s fieldwork was supported by the European Research Council project grant to C.C. (grant agreement number 679787). C.H. is supported by funding from the European Union’s 8th Framework Programme, Horizon 2020 (grant agreement number 802719).
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/25659

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