Jakarta –
The screams were heard from the top of the tree right before a baby monkey baby fell and died. Shortly thereafter, some of the baby’s relatives gathered to devour the lifeless carcass. This event was recorded on the camera and scientists watched everything.
The researchers have observed the population of the White Capusin Monkey (Cebus Imitator) for more than 37 years, documenting their lives in the Santa Rosa National Park in Costa Rica. Over the years, scientists have never recorded cases of cannibalism between these monkeys. All of that changed on April 9, 2019.
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The team described the terrible incident in a report published on October 16, 2020 in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
When observing a small group of monkeys, scientists heard a loud noise from the tree nearby. A 10-day-old monkey, known as CT-19, fell to the ground, and its mother, called CT, rushed down to take the baby.
CT tried to carry the baby back to the top of the tree, twice, with CT-19 attached to his stomach, but the baby fell twice and could no longer hold on to his mother. CT-19 fell not moving for a few minutes, and before long, other monkeys gathered to check the carcass.
A 2-year-old male monkey approached the scene and began to bite the dead monkey’s feet, bit his toes.
“Even though CT didn’t try to take the baby, he remained near him and was alert,” the writers were quoted as saying by Live Science.
An alpha female monkey, 23 years old, then pulled the monkey’s body away from a young male monkey and biting the carcass seriously, starting from the left foot. After half an hour, the female monkey has eaten all the lower parts of the baby monkey, leaving only heads, chest, and arms.
Young male managed to steal a little tail during this ‘party’, but besides that, Alfa’s female devoured most of the CT-19. Technically, the male is the second cousin of CT-19, and the alpha female is the great-grandfather’s aunt, the researchers wrote.
Before the death of this young Kapusin, only eight cases of cannibalism were observed in the primates of Central and South America. Among the primates, in general, cases of cannibalism that rarely occur tend to coincide with the murder of infants committed by adults who are not related.
In other cases, individuals who are close to close can eat the baby after his natural death. Whereas in this case, there is a reason to believe that CT-19 is a victim of baby murder.
“As soon as the screams and the baby fell to the ground, adult male monkeys were chased from the same area by an adult female,” the researchers wrote.
Previous observations of the Kapusin showed that females often expel the perpetrators after witnessing the murder of the baby, and although scientists did not witness how or why CT-19 fell, they suspect that adult male monkeys may have pushed or attacking the baby.
White -faced capusin monkeys usually eat plants and small animals, such as lizards, squirrels, and birds. When capturing prey, these monkeys tend to start by biting their prey’s face to quickly silence prey and avoid being bitten; Capusin monkeys usually eat the whole body of prey, both alone and in groups.
However, when eating one of his own prey, the behavior of these monkeys is very different, only two monkeys who also eat and they leave the entire top of the wreck of prey untouched.
Most other monkeys nearby just check the carcass, or make a threatening movement at him, which shows that this is an unusual situation for the Capusin.
The authors suspect, some monkeys that turn to cannibalism may do it for the benefits of nutrition. About two weeks after eating CT-19, Alfa’s female gave birth to her own child, which means she was in the final stages of pregnancy during the incident.
The young male monkey has just been weaned from its own mother, which means he just started looking for his own food when CT-19 fell from the top of the tree.
These scenarios suggest that the Kapusin might turn to cannibalism when it really needs additional nutrition, but because primate cannibalism is very rarely observed, this is just a hypothesis.
The authors concluded that the report on the case of primate cannibalism needs to be further studied to determine exactly why the monkey performs this behavior.
(rns/rns)
