Animals taxed by love and loss, too

摘要

It's a tear-jerker. Researchers at a reserve in Shaanxi province, China, watched as the alpha male of a group of snub-nosed monkeys spent a final, tender hour with his dying partner beneath the tree from which she had fallen, cracking her head on a rock. Before she succumbed, he gently touched and groomed her. After she was dead he remained by her side for 5 minutes, touching her and pulling gently at her hand as if to try and revive her. It is one of the first examples of caring and grieving in monkeys in the wild. "The events suggest that in the case of strongly bonded individuals at least, monkeys may show compassionate behaviour to ailing or dying individuals," says team member James Anderson of Kyoto University, Japan (Current Biology, doi.org/bhvp).