3/27/2023 0 Comments Chimpanzee baby![]() Non-human primates (hereafter: primates) are the best-studied taxa with regards to this topic (see for a detailed review). The preponderance of observations occurring in more socially complex taxa with extended maternal investment and large brains suggests that post-mortem death responses correlate with complex social cognition. Among land mammals, African elephants ( Loxodonta africana) have been seen intensively investigating corpses from recently deceased individuals, attempting to lift or bury them, and repeatedly visiting a corpse for up to a week after death. These authors suggest that high encephalization may be an important predictor of the incidence of post-mortem interactions. Within cetaceans, members of the Delphinidae family constitute the vast majority of cases of post-mortem interactions, with the highest incidence found among the Sousa and Tursiops genera. These differences in the degree of post-mortem interactions correspond to differences in degree of maternal investment. differentiate between non-cetaceans, which limit their behaviour to protecting the corpse from external attacks over a short period of time, and cetaceans, who show a longer period of post-mortem interactions and more nurturing behaviours, such as carrying and activities related to assisting with breathing. For example, in a review of marine mammal cases, Reggente et al. ![]() Researchers have reported more complex responses to conspecific death in some mammals and some have argued that this reflects intensive maternal investment and/or greater cognitive capacities. Similarly, crows ( Corvus brachyrhynchos) occasionally contact dead conspecifics in exploratory, aggressive or sexual ways, which Swift & Marzluff interpreted as an inability to recognize stimuli that indicate death, resulting in inappropriate or conflicting displacement activities. While these responses in insects are flexible, they are thought be reflexive and to act primarily as disease or predator avoidance behaviours, rather than representing a cognitive understanding of death. ![]() For example, in eusocial insects, chemical changes both prior to and after death act as death cues and initiate context-dependent responses, such as corpse removal, cannibalism, or burial. For some species, these observations suggest an absence or a severely limited understanding of death. Indeed, over the past several decades, the field of comparative thanatology has expanded dramatically and reports of non-human responses to death have begun to accumulate across taxa. Animals cannot do this.’ In recent decades, detailed observations of animals in the wild and captivity have raised questions about the degree to which humans are unique in this capacity, warranting a broader understanding of the evolutionary roots of death concepts and practices. Philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that the capacity to understand death is uniquely human: ‘Mortals are they who can experience death as death. ![]() We interpret these data in the context of recent discussions regarding what non-human primates understand about death. Using an information theoretic approach, we found no support for any of the leading hypotheses for duration of continued carriage. Median duration of carriage was 1.83 days (interquartile range = 1.03–3.59). We found that mothers carried infant corpses at high rates, despite behavioural evidence that they recognize that death has occurred. Here, we tested these hypotheses using a dataset of cases of infant corpse carrying by chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania ( n = 33), the largest dataset of such cases in chimpanzees. Such interactions have been proposed to be related to maternal condition, attachment, environmental conditions or reflect a lack of awareness that the infant has died. Mothers of several species of primate have been reported to carry and continue to interact with dead infants. However, observations of how conspecifics respond to dead individuals are rare and highly variable. The study of non-human primate thanatology has expanded dramatically in recent years as scientists seek to understand the evolutionary roots of human death concepts and practices.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |