Two reports of chimpanzees tending their dead provide poignant examples of how humanity’s closest relatives grieve for the dead, a behavior once thought unique to humans.
In one report, two mothers in a chimpanzee colony in Guinea carried the dead bodies of their infants for weeks. In the other, chimps at a safari park in Britain cared for an elderly female in her final days.
“We propose that chimpanzees’ response to death has been underestimated,” wrote researchers led by University of Stirling psychologist James Anderson in a paper published April 26 in Current Biology.
Chimps 'feel death like humans'
"Several phenomena have at one time or another been considered as setting humans apart from other species: reasoning ability, language ability, tool use, cultural variation, and self-awareness, for example," said James Anderson from Stirling University, who led the research team looking at the death of the elderly female.
"But science has provided strong evidence that the boundaries between us and other species are nowhere near to being as clearly defined as many people used to think.
"The awareness of death is another such psychological phenomenon."
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"In the days before Pansy died, the others were notably attentive towards her, and they even altered their routine sleeping arrangements to remain by her, by sleeping on the floor in a room where they don't usually sleep," lead author James Anderson told Discovery News.
Blossom, another elderly female, and Pansy's daughter, Rosie, both stroked and groomed the dying Pansy, and sometimes just sat, subdued, beside the elderly female. Blossom's son Chippy checked to see if Pansy was alive by manipulating her arms and trying to open her mouth.
All of the chimps tossed and turned at night, much more than normal, during the dying female's final few days.
"As she died, all three were closely gathered around her, and they paid especially close attention to her face," said Anderson, who is in the Psychology Department at the University of Stirling. "After some lifting and shaking of her head and shoulders, all three moved away from her, and there was no more such contact at all."
After Pansy died, however, overhead video cameras captured Chippy jumping onto the platform with Pansy's body. He leapt into the air, brought both hands down and pounded on Pansy's torso. He later sat by the corpse, and gently removed straw from the face.
"It is possible that it was an attempt to arouse Pansy, or a serious test of whether she was able to respond," Anderson said.
In the case of captive apes, it may mean a difference in how humans care for elderly creatures near death:
In light of all of the findings, Anderson and his colleagues suggest it might be better to not remove ailing elderly or terminally ill chimpanzees from their groups before they die, if the chimps are not contagious. At present, such individuals are often taken away and put to sleep.
"In some cases," Anderson and his team conclude, "it might be more humane to allow elderly apes to die naturally in their familiar social setting than to attempt to separate them for treatment or euthanasia."
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