Chimpanzee Mother Seen Applying an Insect to A Wound on Her Son
Published:08 Feb.2022 Source:Cell Press
For the first time, researchers observed chimpanzees in Gabon, West Africa applying insects to their wounds and the wounds of others. In a study published February 7 in the journal Current Biology, scientists describe this wound-tending behavior and argue that it is evidence that chimpanzees have the capacity for prosocial behaviors that have been linked with empathy in humans.
In November 2019, Alessandra Mascaro (@alessandra_masc), a volunteer at the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project, observed a chimpanzee named Suzee inspecting a wound on the foot of her adolescent son, Sia, catching an insect out of the air, putting it into her mouth, and then applying it onto the wound. Researchers of the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project had been studying this group of chimpanzees in Loango National Park for 7 years but hadn't witnessed behavior like this before. Mascaro took a video of the mother and son and showed it to her supervisors, Tobias Deschner, a primatologist with the project, and Simone Pika (@Evol_of_Com), a cognitive biologist at Osnabrück University (@UniOsnabrück).