[Sharon]

In her book, "Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters", scientist and author Jane Goodall writes as follows of a colobus monkey clasping its dead baby:

"She kept trying to groom its poor little coat. Oh, it was heart rending. I'm only so glad I've never seen a chimp with a dead baby. I just couldn't bear it."

This powerful maternal instinct in primates is evidently well-documented.

In this case it was a Chacma baboon carrying the remains of a dead infant on its back, refusing to part with its baby in spite of the advanced state of decomposition.



Amongt a troop near Sabie River were some older males, testosterone-driven younger males, plus a number of mothers, some with young babies clinging to their undersides and others carrying older babies on their backs.

One particular baboon looked like it had some loose bits of skin flapping around its haunches. It was in fact carrying a dead baby on its back, this was not average baboon behaviour.



Activity was fairly typical as they moved along, with pauses to look for food, a quick grooming and even a hurried coupling in the middle of the road by one pair - but nothing exceptional. Certainly none of them paid any attention to the one carrying the dead baby.

What was amazing though was that as she walked along with the others, this pathetic bundle of skin and sinew would periodically slip off her back and land on the ground.



She would then immediately pick it up, replace and adjust it as she walked along - as if well-practised.

[Faline]

How moving

[Sharon]

Bet this goes on a lot more than is documented

[icheerthebull]

[xxxbecsxxx]

Oh god

[kellyhound]

thats some fucked up shit

[FrightRat]

From the look of it, she's been carrying it for a while already.

[LissaMarie88]

poor little thing :(

[ArKrayzie]

[Darkest Angel]

She needs to have a new infant to help her over come the death of this one. Very sad. To think, this baboon, an animal still cares for her dead baby while many of our own species kill or abandon our babies. Perhaps we are not as evolved as we would like to think.