Successful observation of a mother monkey taking care of a disabled child
During an ecological survey in the Brazilian rainforest, the research team accidentally discovered a capuchin mother carrying a child with a weak left leg hanging high in the tree canopy.
This is a valuable discovery because it is rare to see a mother monkey caring for a disabled child in the wild.
Therefore, when we conducted a follow-up observation, the child monkeyAppears to be a newborn baby less than one month old. Although there is no injury to the left leg, the knee joint has been dislocated for some reason.was estimated.
Since the left leg is completely non-functional and unable to walk on the ground, the child mostly clings to its mother’s back to move around.
However, it seems that it was always in an unstable state because it could not grip firmly with its feet.
The mother also stopped frequently and adjusted the position of the baby monkey by putting it on her back.
Researchers say such frequent rearing is not seen in other macaque mothers with newborns of the same age.
This is a 30-second video of a mother monkey carrying a child on her back and smashing a fruit with a stone.
Capuchin monkeys are extremely intelligent and are known for hammering modest stones into hard nuts and fruits.
However, here too, a different appearance from other capuchin monkeys was observed.
Capuchin monkeys usually anchor the tip of their long tails to the ground to stabilize the force when striking stone tools.
However, the mother, who carried the lame child on her back, showed an unstable appearance as the tail frequently floated upward.
this isThe result of consideration to prevent the child monkey from falling due to the impact of hitting the stoneIt is considered.
Because of that, the beating was not stable, and it seemed that it was very difficult to break the fruit.
Even in the video, you can see that the mother monkey is losing its balance due to the recoil of the stone tool.
Here is an example of actual use of stable stone tools. (You can see that the tip of the tail is firmly fixed to the ground.)
On the other hand, it was not only the mother monkey who was in charge of care.
When the mother is out for food,Adult males from the same colony sometimes took care of the young monkeys instead.It seems that.
What is the end that parent and child ended up with…?
Unfortunately, the young monkey did not survive the first eight weeks of life, despite his mother’s diligent care.
As a result of continued observation for a while after that, a remarkable change was seen in the mother monkey.
Previously, group members were allowed to approach and touch the young monkeys, but since thenWhen the members touched or approached their deceased child, they began to avoid contact, and eventually distanced themselves from the group.It is.
Researchers say the mother monkey sometimes “crawled the corpse with one hand” and “carried the corpse by hanging from its tail or arm.”
Furthermore, despite the smell of putrefaction starting to waft from the corpse, he continued to groom the baby monkey single-mindedly.
The foraging ability has also declined due to the heavy corpse being constantly carried, and it seems that the mother monkey was eating the flies that landed on her child.
He also stopped many times to put the corpse on a branch, stare at it, and groom it.
Regarding the “postmortem care” seen in these primate mothers, the research team“It is considered to be an evolved care method to prevent child abandonment or abandonment when the child is temporarily unconscious or unresponsive.”said.
Before long, the mother monkey jumped over the trees, released her child’s hand, and the lifeless body fell to the ground.
But what I can say without a doubt is that capuchins seem to be more compassionate creatures than we imagine.
“It is a stone tool made by humans about 50,000 years ago” → Latest research “It was the wreckage of a monkey cracking a nut”
