Wilderness Allow Me to Ruin Your Day
posted by August 22 at 11:32 AM
onOne of the saddest stories of the week (but not as traumatizing as Allison’s):
BERLIN - A gorilla at a zoo in the German city of Muenster is refusing to let go of her dead baby’s body several days after it died of unknown causes.Allwetter Zoo spokeswoman Ilona Zuehlke says the 3-month-old male baby died on Saturday but its 11-year-old mother continues to carry its body around. Zuehlke says such behavior is not uncommon to gorillas.
Zuehlke says the mother “is mourning and must say goodbye.” The mother gorilla is named Gana.
I had no idea gorillas did that. The rest of the story, and a photo, are here.
Thanks to tipster Gurldoggie.
Comments
GORILLAS. DESTROY ALL MISPLACED APOSTROPHE'S!!!!!
I don't get it. If I were a mom, I wouldn't give a shit about my baby. How do you? It's just a stupid baby. It's not like you can't get another one.
I remember reading a Harper and Row book, back when I was a kid, on gorillas, and they mentioned this behavior.
So it's not too surprising, if they mentioned it in a kid's book (they said she was "sad") that people have known about this for years.
Nice. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go jump off the Chain of Rocks Bridge.
Thanks for posting that. I couldn't bear to put it on my own blog and just had to share it with someone. I know it's hard for some sociopathic Sloggers, like @2, to understand, but some of us on the internets are actually caring human beings who feel both compassion and sorrow when we witness something so deeply sad like the death of a child, human or not.
To get myself past it, I checked out these photos. Way way happier. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23679187
How is this any worse than injecting a corpse with embalming fluid, and then having friends and family parade by for one last view?
"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." Albert Einstein
@5
If you ate your feelings you could save big.
This sort of behavior's been documented for years in different great apes. A chimp infant died at a sanctuary and the chimps refused to allow the caretakers to take the body away for days as the mother carried it around. AND chimps have been recorded making spears to kill and eat bush babies with.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/apegenius/
Watch your back, humans, the apes are upon us.
We've had humans keep dead relatives in their houses for years sometimes.
Heck, we've event commented on it in SLOG posts over the years.
Baby bush baby!
Bush eating baby!
This is a sad story, but I don't get why this is surprising. The mother is mourning, and can't let go yet of the only reminder of her child that she has. Humans do the same thing, just in a different way. And when you're talking great apes, it's not anthropomorphizing to describe things in these terms. Aside from a relative lack of abstract thought and language, great apes are pretty much people. Or people are great apes, if you prefer.
Maybe the gorilla is Christian fundamentalist and believes the corpse to be a person until it disintegrates or some such nonsense.
@12 should have read: Chimp eating Bush baby....
Wha - ? An 11 year-old gorilla can reproduce?
Sure puts that Texas Mormon cult thing in a whole new light...
@6,
Or propping it up in a corner in the living room.
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