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Just before the death of a Capuchin monkey cub, a cry was heard from the spinning tops. Soon, some of the child’s relatives gathered to eat the corpse – scientists found out everything.
This particular population of white-faced capuchins has been observed by researchers Monkeys (Sebas imitation) He has been documenting his life in Costa Rica’s Santa Rosa National Park for over 37 years. In all these years, scientists have never reported cannibalism among monkeys; But that all changed on April 9, 2019.
The group described the horrific incident in a new report published in the October 16 issue Environment and evolution.
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While observing a small group of monkeys, the scientists heard loud noises coming from a nearby tree. A 10-day-old monkey known as CT-19 fell to the ground and a mother named CT went to get the baby. CT-19 clung to the stomach and CT tried to get the baby back on top, but the baby fell twice and could no longer hang over the mother. The CT-19 remained motionless for a few minutes and soon other monkeys gathered to examine the body.
Warning: The following is a graphical description of what happened next.
A 2-year-old man arrived on the scene and began kneeling at the dead monkey’s feet. “Although CT did not attempt to recover the body, she remained alert,” the authors wrote. A 23-year-old alpha girl then took the corpse out of the young man and looked at God impatiently, starting with her left foot; Half an hour later, the female ate the entire lower half of the baby, leaving only the head, chest and arms.
During this party the young male was able to steal with a small tail, but the Alpha Pen stole most of the CT-19. Technically, the male was CT-19’s second auxin and the authors wrote that the alpha was the baby’s grandmother.
The authors suggest that before the death of this young Capuchin, only eight cannibals were observed in primates from Central and South America. In primates, in general, rare cases of cannibalism kill the coin in connection with infanticide by unrelated adults. In other cases, close relatives can eat a child after natural death.
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In this case, there is reason to believe that CT-19 was the victim of infanticide, the authors wrote.
“The PW adult male followed an adult female from the same area immediately after the scream and the baby fell to the ground,” the authors wrote. Previous observations Although scientists have not yet seen how or why the CT-19 fell, they suspect that the PW adult male may have pushed or assaulted the child after witnessing the infanticide.
White-faced capuchin monkeys usually eat plants and small animals such as lizards, antelopes, and birds. When an animal captures its prey, the animal will begin by biting its muzzle, thus quickly silencing the animal and avoiding self-biting; Capuchins usually use whole animals individually or in groups. The monkeys behaved very differently when they ate one of their own; Only two monkeys participated in the diet and did not touch the entire upper part of the god.
Most of the other monkeys in the vicinity either examined the carcass on their own, or gave threatening gestures, which the authors wrote was “an unusual situation for Capuchins.”
Some monkeys who turn to cannibals may have done so for nutritional value, the authors suggested. About two weeks after the CT-19 snack, Alpha Penn gave birth to her baby, meaning she was in the final stages of her pregnancy at the time of the accident. The young male had recently been weaned from his mother, meaning he had begun to defend himself when he fell from the tricks of CT-19.
These conditions indicate that Capuchins turn to cannibals when additional nutrients are needed, but this is only a theory, as primate cannibalism is rarely observed. Further clinical cases of cannibal primates need to be evaluated to determine exactly why monkeys engage in this behavior, the authors concluded.
Originally published in Live Science.
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