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Screams echoed from the treetops just before a baby capuchin monkey fell to his death. Soon after, a few of the child’s family gathered to consume the lifeless corpse – and scientists saw it all.
Researchers have observed this particular population of white-faced capuchins monkeys (Cebus imitator) for over 37 years, documenting their life in Santa Rosa National Park in Costa Rica. In all these years, scientists had never recorded any cases of cannibalism in monkeys; but everything changed on April 9, 2019.
The team described the gruesome incident in a new report, published on October 16 in the newspaper Ecology and evolution.
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While observing a small group of monkeys, 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, called CT, rushed to retrieve the child. CT tried to get the baby back into the treetops twice with CT-19 hanging from its tummy, but the child fell both times and could no longer hold onto the mother. The CT-19 fell motionless for several minutes, and soon other monkeys gathered to inspect the corpse.
Disclaimer: The following is a graphical description of what happened next.
A 2-year-old man approached the scene and began to nibble the dead monkey’s paw, biting his toes. “Although CT made no attempt to retrieve the corpse, it remained close and vigilant,” the authors wrote. A 23-year-old alpha female then pulled the young male’s body away and gnawed at the corpse seriously, starting with the left foot; after half an hour, the female had consumed the entire lower half of the child, leaving only the head, chest and arms.
The juvenile male managed to fly with a bit of tail during this party, but otherwise the alpha female swallowed up most of the CT-19. Technically, the male was a second cousin of CT-19 and the alpha female was the infant’s great aunt, the authors wrote.
Before the disappearance of this young capuchin, only eight cases of cannibalism had been observed in primates from Central and South America, noted the authors. In primates, in general, rare cases of cannibalism tend to coincide with infanticide committed by unrelated adults. In other cases, closely related individuals may consume an infant after its 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.
“Immediately after the cries and the infant fell to the ground, an adult male was chased from the same area by an adult female,” the authors wrote. Previous observations Capuchins suggest that women often chase the abuser away after witnessing infanticide, and although scientists have not seen how or why the CT-19 fell, they suspect the adult male PW may have grown or attack the baby.
White-faced capuchin monkeys typically eat plants and small animals, such as lizards, squirrels, and birds. When capturing animal prey, monkeys tend to bite the face first, in order to quickly silence the animal and avoid being bitten themselves; capuchins generally consume the whole animal, either singly or in groups. By cannibalizing one of their own, however, the apes behaved quite differently; only two monkeys took part in the meal and they left the entire upper half of the corpse intact.
Most of the other monkeys nearby only inspected the corpse, or made threatening gestures at it, suggesting it was “an unusual situation for the Capuchins,” the authors wrote.
The few monkeys that have turned to cannibalism may have done so for nutritional benefits, the authors suggested. About two weeks after munching on CT-19, the alpha female gave birth to her own young, meaning she was late in pregnancy during the incident. The young male had recently been weaned from his own mother, meaning he had only just started to fend for himself when the CT-19 fell from the treetops.
These scenarios suggest that Capuchins may turn to cannibalism when they desperately need additional nutrients, but since cannibalism in primates is so rarely seen, this is only a guess. Further reports of cannibalism in primates will need to be evaluated to determine exactly why the monkeys engage in this behavior, the authors concluded.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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