A troop of Langur monkeys appear to mourn what they think is a dead baby Langur. Is consolation unique to humans?
Fanatic Cook
A troop of Langur monkeys appear to mourn what they think is a dead baby Langur. Is consolation unique to humans?
Fanatic Cook 
“We show that mothers that were more strongly bonded to their infant at death carry the corpse for longer, with emotions possibly playing an important role.” – Alecia Carter
“However, our study also shows that, through experience with death and external cues, primate mothers may gain better awareness of death and therefore ‘decide’ not to carry their dead infant with them, even if they may still experience loss-related emotions. We found that bonds, particularly the mother-infant bond, possibly drive primates’ responses to death… and because of our shared evolutionary history… human mortuary practices and grief may have been present in early human species as well — and they may have transformed into the different rituals and practices during human evolution.” – Ref: “Why do some primate mothers carry their infant’s corpse? A cross-species comparative study” by Elisa Fernández-Fueyo, Yukimaru Sugiyama, Takeshi Matsui and Alecia J. Carter, 15 September 2021, Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences.
ThanatoBase, (created by Alecia Carter) invites researchers to contribute their own observations to a ‘living database’ of non-human primate death – and aims to help address fundamental questions about the evolution of animal cognition and emotion.
https://thanatobase.mystrikingly.com/
LikeLike