Chimpanzee mothers offer new clues about how humans respond to death
A new study analyzing chimpanzee and bonobo behavior suggests that the duration of infant corpse carrying is linked to the cause of death and maternal care. Researchers believe these findings provide evolutionary insights into how humans process grief and death.
Why it matters
Understanding primate behavior regarding death helps scientists map the evolutionary history of human emotional and social responses to loss.
Chimpanzee mothers may carry dead infants longer depending on infant age, cause of death, maternal care, and temperature.
Humans are not the only animals that stay close to the dead.
Chimpanzee and bonobo mothers sometimes continue carrying an infant after it has died, sometimes for a few hours and sometimes for many weeks.
That behavior matters because it touches a difficult question: what does another animal understand about death?
Looking at these mothers may help researchers think about how human responses to death developed over evolutionary time.
The behavior is known as infant corpse carrying. It is widely reported in primates , but the reason one mother stops quickly while another keeps carrying for days has been difficult to explain.
A new analysis found that carrying time was linked most clearly with how the infant died.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in