Nobody knows what emotions swept through Gana’s head and heart as she persisted in cradling and nuzzling the remains of her son. But primatologists do know this: Among nearly all species of apes and monkeys in the wild, a mother will react to the death of her infant as Gana did—by clutching the little decedent to her breast and treating it as though it were still alive. For days or even weeks afterward, she will take it with her everywhere and fight off anything that threatens to snatch it away. “The only time I was ever mobbed by langurs was when I tried to inspect a baby corpse,” said primatologist
Sarah Hrdy.
Yes, we’re a lot like other primates, particularly the great apes, with whom we have more than 98 per cent of our genes in common. Yet elaborate displays of apparent maternal grief like Gana’s may reveal less about our shared awareness of death than our shared impulse to act as though it didn’t exist. Hrdy, author of Mother Nature and the coming Mothers and Others, said, “We’re talking about primates who have singleton births after long periods of gestation. Each baby represents an enormous investment for the mother.”
Michael Wilson, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota who has studied chimpanzees at Jane Goodall’s research site in Gombe, Tanzania, said chimps were “very different from us in terms of what they understand about death and the difference between the living and the dead.” A mother will try to nurse her dead baby back to life, Wilson said, “but when the infant becomes quite decayed, she’ll carry it by just one leg or sling it over her back in a casual way.” Juvenile chimpanzees display signs of genuine grief when their mothers die. Yet adult chimpanzees rarely react with overt sentimentality to the death of another adult, Wilson said. As a rule, sick or elderly adults go off into the forest to die alone, he said.
... contd.
