A gorilla in the midst – of emotional rebirth?

Rowan Hooper, news editor

(Image: Anup Shah)

In the Central African Republic, a female western lowland gorilla runs through a cloud of butterflies. She capers, if a gorilla can be said to caper. The other gorillas in her group carry on feeding, ignoring her.

It is in stark contrast to the week before: the capering gorilla, named Malui, had given birth to a stillborn fetus. It would have been Malui's fourth offspring, and Makumba, the silverback's, thirteenth. "Malui tried to revive the baby and even tried to get it to suckle," says wildlife photographer Anup Shah, who was watching the animals at the Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve. What happened next was unusual. Malui's daughter, Mosoko, started grooming her. "Since grooming is rare, it probably signifies something profound," says Shah. "Was the daughter telling her mother that she understood her grief?"

It's not easy to interpret human behaviour in such circumstances, let alone that of other animals. But behaviours associated with grief in humans have been seen in animals such as dolphins and, indeed, gorillas. Malui carried the stillborn baby on her back, finally abandoning the body some 30 hours after giving birth.

The next week, Shah shot the butterfly picture. "Malui was thoroughly enjoying herself," he says - and she seemed to have put the loss of the baby behind her. "I did not see any other instances of deep emotions in these gorillas," says Shah. "My theory is that gorillas reserve deep emotions for extreme situations."

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/25f7a518/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C110Cgorilla0Ebutterflies0Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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