Chimpanzees' grief caught on camera in Cameroon

[Smersh]

FYI - I also posted this in Live Science in the Animals forum here.

More than a dozen chimps stand in silence watching from behind their wire enclosure as Dorothy, a chimp in her late 40s who died of heart failure, is wheeled past them.

The chimps are from the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon. Locals from the village work as "care-givers" for the orphaned animals whose mothers were all killed for the illegal bushmeat trade ...

Full story here.

I'd post a comment as well, but I don't know what to say ...

 

[jim48]

I don't know what to say either, except to remind that we share almost 99% of our DNA with chimps.

 

[ZenGalacticore]

How about that we are all connected in the web of life. And that humans neeed to stop thinking of themselves as "separate" from that web that is spun upon the Earth.

Rest in peace, Dorothy.

 

[a_lost_packet_]

...I'd post a comment as well, but I don't know what to say ...

It's a great picture filled with a lot of emotion, isn't it?

Personally, I feel that many animals experience "emotions." They may not be as involved as ours intellectually but, I believe they exist.

Apes, some monkeys, elephants and a few other species (including rats) have repeatedly displayed behaviors that are hard to define in any other way than "emotion."

We tend to think of emotion as an advanced concept simply because of all the different components human intelligence associates with it. But, it does not have to be such an intellectual process. If that was the case, would seriously brain damaged humans be capable of it? Sure, they're still human but if emotions are a higher, intellectual process and reserved for humans alone that, IMO, makes describing them even more problematic. When you think about it, "emotions" could be an excellent survival tool, much more primitive than the way we normally view them.

I can't say whether or not these chimps were experiencing an emotion of loss or bereavement. Certainly, it appears that this event holds some sort of significance. I wish there was some live footage of this event to view. That might tell me a bit more.

 

[Mee_n_Mac]

I'm pretty sure the one in the rear, left isn't experiencing any grief. Looks more to me like "more bananas for me is good." And the one in the center is surely emoting "Get you stinking hands off her you damn dirty human !"





No really ...






Wha ... we can make jokes about Michael Jackson dying but not about a chimp ?