Explain the behavior of eating the corpse of the mother monkey in the Italian reserve

Scientists believe that the monkey Tonkea eating the corpse of a baby can be a sign of maternal bond.

Monkey researchers in the Parco Faunistico di Piano dell'Abatino animal sanctuary in Italy witnessed a monkey who first made Evalyne's mother carry her dead baby for weeks, then ate the crippled corpse. My name is until my bones are bare, National Geographic reports.

Monkey Tonkea , native animal in Southeast Asia, often carries with him the corpse of a young child for hours or even days. It may be a sign of mourning or because they do not understand that the offspring is actually dead.

"This kind of behavior was recorded in chimpanzees and some other primates, in which the mother brought the dead baby until the corpse decomposed," said Frans de Waal, a primate at the University. Emory, Georgia, USA, said. "But the new thing here is the cannibalistic behavior. Normally, monkeys don't eat each other."

My mother brought the dead baby carcass that had died with me for many days.(Photo: Adriana De Marco).

According to Arianna De Marco, evolutionary biologist at Fondazione Institute Ethoikos, Italy, the leader of the study, monkey Tonkea not only does not eat cannibalism, they are also vegetarian and never eat meat.

Sudden death in newborn monkeys is very common with monkeys for the first time as a mother. Out of 51 births in the reserve, 16 young monkeys died after birth or in the womb.

After 4-day-old calf died, Evalyne became agitated. He stared and screamed at his own shadow on the barn door, an unprecedented act, according to De Marco. He and his colleagues published observations in this month's Primates magazine.

Afterwards, Evalyne continued to brush her hair, lick and carry the baby's corpse around, even when the corpse dried up on the 8th day and the head of the baby fell out on the 14th. The calf remains the same. That could be one of the reasons Evalyne continued to caress her body."I feel both curious and touched," De Marco said.

When the rest of the baby's body rinsed and the hair fell off in the third week, Evalyne was caught gnawing at her body. According to the researchers, the case of the mother monkey eating the only other offspring occurs in the Taihangshan monkey in China.

"It's hard to explain this behavior. A sudden change in motherly behavior from caring to eating meat is amazing," De Marco commented.

One possible explanation for Evalyne's strange behavior is that it was just a mother and the time when the young were alive enough to create a maternal love. In that sense, carnivorous behavior may be the last extreme expression of the attachment to the offspring of the mother monkey, De Marco concluded.