[ad_1]
Screams rang from the treetops just before a small Capuchin monkey plunged to its death. Soon after, some of the child’s relatives gathered to consume the lifeless corpse, and the scientists saw it all.
The researchers observed this particular population of white-faced capuchins monkeys (Imitator of Cebus) for over 37 years, documenting their life in Costa Rica’s Santa Rosa National Park. In all those years, scientists had never recorded a case of cannibalism among monkeys; but everything changed on April 9, 2019.
The team described the macabre incident in a new report, published Oct.16 in the magazine Ecology and evolution.
Related: Survival of the grossest: 8 disgusting animal behaviors
While observing a small group of monkeys, the scientists heard loud vocalizations from above in a nearby tree. A 10-day-old monkey, known as CT-19, fell to the ground and its mother, named CT, scrambled to pick up the baby. The CT attempted to bring the baby back to the treetops, twice, with the CT-19 clinging to his tummy, but the baby fell both times and could no longer hold onto the mother. The CT-19 remained motionless for several minutes and soon other monkeys gathered to inspect the corpse.
Warning: The following is a graphical description of what happened next.
A 2-year-old male approached the scene and began nibbling the dead monkey’s foot, chewing on his toes. “Although CT did not attempt to retrieve the body, she remained close and alert,” the authors wrote. A 23-year-old alpha female then pushed the body away from the young male and actually nibbled the corpse, starting with her left foot; after half an hour, the female had consumed the entire lower half of the baby, leaving only the head, chest and arms.
The young male managed to escape with a bit of a tail during this party, but otherwise, the alpha female devoured most of the CT-19. Technically, the male was a second cousin of CT-19 and the alpha female was the baby’s granddaughter, the authors wrote.
Prior to this young Capuchin’s death, only eight cases of cannibalism had been observed in Central-South American primates, the authors noted. Among primates, in general, the rare cases of cannibalism tend to coinicide with infanticide committed by unrelated adults. In other cases, closely related individuals may consume a child after its natural death.
Related: The 12 strangest animal discoveries
In this case, there is reason to believe that CT-19 was the victim of infanticide, the authors wrote.
“Immediately after the screams and the baby fell to the ground, the PW adult male was kicked out of the same area by an adult female,” the authors wrote. Previous observations Capuchins suggest that females often chase the culprit away after witnessing the infanticide, and although scientists have not witnessed how or why the CT-19 fell, they suspect the adult male PW may have pushed or otherwise attacked the child.
White-faced Capuchin monkeys typically eat both plants and small animals, such as lizards, squirrels, and birds. When capturing animal prey, monkeys tend to start by biting the muzzle, in order to quickly silence the animal and avoid being bitten by themselves; Capuchins usually consume the whole animal, alone or in groups. When they cannibalized one of them, however, the monkeys behaved quite differently; only two monkeys took part in the meal and left the entire upper half of the corpse intact.
Most of the other monkeys in the vicinity either only inspected the corpse, or made threatening gestures towards it, suggesting this was “an unusual situation for Capuchins,” the authors wrote.
The few monkeys who have turned to cannibalism may have done so for the nutritional benefits, the authors suggested. About two weeks after snacking on CT-19, the alpha female gave birth to her young, meaning she had been in the later stages of her pregnancy during the incident. The young male had recently been weaned from his mother, which means he had just begun to fend for himself when CT-19 fell from the treetops.
These scenarios suggest that Capuchins may turn to cannibalism when they are in dire need of additional nutrients, but since primate cannibalism is so rarely observed, this is only a hypothesis. More clinical cases of primate cannibalism will need to be evaluated to determine exactly why monkeys engage in this behavior, the authors concluded.
Originally published in Live Science.
Source link
