FW: the most haunting picture proof that chimps grieve

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Note how some chimpanzees are holding the shoulders of others, etc.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1223227/Is-haunting-picture-proof\

-chimps-really-DO-grieve.html

 

Is this haunting picture proof that chimps really DO grieve?

 

By MICHAEL HANLON

Last updated at 9:01 AM on 27th October 2009

 

United in what appears to be deep and profound grief, a phalanx of more than

a dozen chimpanzees stood in silence watching from behind the wire of their

enclosure as the body of one of their own was wheeled past.

 

This extraordinary scene took place recently at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee

Rescue Center in Cameroon, West Africa.

 

When a chimp called Dorothy, who was in her late 40s, died of heart failure,

her fellow apes seemed to be stricken by sorrow.

 

As they wrapped their arms around each other in a gesture of solidarity,

Dorothy's female keeper gently settled her into the wheelbarrow which

carried her to her final resting place - not before giving this much-loved

inhabitant of the centre a final affectionate stroke on the forehead.

 

Chimpanzees appear to console one another as Dorothy is carried to her final

resting place in a wheelbarrow

 

Locals from the village serve as 'care-givers' to the chimps - something

hugely needed by the animals who are all orphans as their mothers were

killed for the illegal bushmeat trade.

 

Hunters captured them as young babies, often still clinging to their

mother's bodies, to sell as pets.

 

Until recently, describing scenes like this in terms of human emotions such

as 'grief' would have been dismissed by scientists as naive

anthropomorphising.

 

But a growing body of evidence suggests that 'higher' emotions - such as

grieving for a loved one after death, and even a deep understanding of what

death is - may not just be the preserve of our species.

 

Chimpanzees - as you can see in the November issue of National Geographic

magazine, on sale now - and the closely related Bonobos maintain hugely

complex social networks, largely held together by sex and grooming.

 

They have often been observed apparently grieving for lost family and tribe

members by entering a period of quiet mourning after a death, showing

subdued emotions and behaviour.

 

And such complex emotions are not the preserve of primates or even mammals.

Just this month, for instance, Dr Marc Bekoff, an ethologist at the

University of Colorado, reported evidence that magpies not only appear to

grieve for their dead but carry out something akin to a funeral ritual.

 

In one instance, a group of four magpies took it in turns to approach the

corpse of their dead comrade.

 

Two of the birds then flew off to return with a piece of grass, which they

laid down by the corpse. The birds then stood vigil.

 

In fact, there is a large body of anecdotal evidence that corvids - the

group of super-bright birds that include crows, magpies and rooks - engage

in many sophisticated social rituals.

 

But the most famous nonhuman death rituals are those of elephants, who will

often spend days guarding a dead body, gently prodding the remains with

their trunks and giving the impression of being lost in grief.

 

Elephants are highly social, long-lived and intelligent animals, whose

excellent memory is no myth.

 

It is perhaps unsurprising that the loss of a member of the clan produces an

emotional reaction.

 

The evolution of human death rituals is lost in the mists of time. There is

some evidence that now-extinct hominid species such as the Neanderthals

appreciated the significance of mortality, burying their dead and even

scattering the graves with flowers.

 

Seeing a group of chimpanzees, our closest relatives, apparently paying a

sad and heart-rending tribute to their much-loved lost sister gives us,

perhaps, a window on how this deepest and most fundamental emotion evolved

in our own ancestors.