ArticlePrimates; journal of primatology2022
Dead-infant carrying by chimpanzee mothers in the Budongo Forest.
Article in Primates; journal of primatology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Evolutionary Psychopathology of Human Pair-Bonding.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2026Article
- Post-mortem infant-directed behaviours in wild Guinea baboons.Primates; journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Unveiling animal death cognition: the role of social systems.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Article
- A lethal incident during an intergroup encounter in bonobos.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Responses of mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) to deceased infants.Primates; journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Camera Traps Document Infant Corpse Carrying Behaviour in Multiple Unhabituated Chimpanzee Populations.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
15 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It has been suggested that non-human primates can respond to deceased conspecifics in ways that suggest they experience psychological states not unlike humans, some of which could indicate they exhibit a notion of death. Here, we report long-term demographic data from two East African chimpanzee groups. During a combined 40-year observation period, we recorded 191 births of which 68 died in infancy, mostly within the first year. We documented the post-mortem behaviour of the mothers and describe nine occasions where Budongo chimpanzee mothers carried infants for 1-3 days after their death, usually until the body started to decompose. We also observed three additional cases of extended carrying lasting for more than 2 weeks, one of which was followed by the unusual extended carrying of an object and another which lasted 3 months. In each case, the corpses mummified. In addition, we report four instances of recurring dead-infant carrying by mothers, three of whom carried the corpse for longer during the second instance. We discuss these observations in view of functional hypotheses of dead-infant carrying in primates and the potential proximate mechanisms involved in this behaviour.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.