Why do primary mothers carry dead babies for weeks and months? | United Kingdom

It is necessary to develop our understanding of primate behavior towards death, not only through associations, but also through related emotions such as tragedy, which is analogous to tragedy in humans.

Over the course of a century, there have been many reports of mothers of animals caring for the bodies of their young children when they die, and carrying them for days, weeks, or months, even when the bodies of infants are decomposed or mummified.

Animals or superior mammals are considered one of the orders of the scientific classification in the animal world, and include the lemons and monkeys of the Old and New Worlds, and most of the animals of the animal world live in the tropics and subtropics of the Americas, Africa and Asia.

Maternal instinct in animals

In this regard, a study was conducted by researchers in the Department of Anthropology at the College of London Bachelor (University College London) from the Primate Research Institute in the United Kingdom and the University of Kyoto and the Takasakiyama Wildlife Sanctuary in Japan.

In their study, the researchers contacted their bodies after the deaths of the mothers of the animals in more than 400 documented cases, collecting century-old examples of 50 tribal species and creating the largest database of mothers’ responses to death. Their infants. “

Published Results In the September 15 issue of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, researchers document their observations on baby carcasses made by animal mothers from the early 20th century.

And inside A statement One of the records documenting the case dates back to 1915, published on the LiveScience website, co-authored by Elisa Fernandez-Fuo and a graduate student in anthropology at University College London in the United Kingdom.

The report was reviewed Old study Published in Animal Behavior magazine, the case of Rhesus McCaw’s mother carried the dead baby for 5 weeks, and the report states that this behavior was due to maternal instinct.

Chimpanzee mothers carry corpses for months after death (Claudia Sosa-live science)

Prolonged retention of dead bodies

The authors examined reports of monkeys and lemons caring for their dead babies from 1915 to 2020, and nearly 80% of the species they examined carried the corpses of dead babies, and the big monkeys and Old World monkeys carried their babies long after they died.

And inside Previous report Dora Bureau of the University of Oxford in the UK, published on the “Live Science” website in 2010, noted that chimpanzee mothers gave a significant response to the death of their offspring because “these mothers carried the corpses weeks or months later. Death, and the corpses died of two children: 1. Adult male and 2.6 year old female.

In 2017, a female macaque (a type of Old World monkey) carried her dead baby to the Italian wildlife park for 4 weeks and eventually ate the mummified carcass. In the wild.

Emotions in animals control the mother-child bond (Getty Images)

Division, concern

“Emotions in animals are known to control the mother-child bond, for example separating the mother from the living child is of great concern to the mother,” Fernandez-Fuo said. Called older children.

The researchers noted that some animal mothers who carried dead babies sounded the alarm – as a sign of depression – when the body was lost or recovered from it, the researchers justified the loss of bonding between the infant and the mother as a way to cope with the associated stress, and the mother’s behavior, including the mother’s age, the baby’s age and the baby’s sudden death. The group explained that it was related to several factors.

The researchers concluded their study.

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