Gorillas gather around and groom their dead

It is now known that many animals exhibit unique behaviors around same-species corpses, ranging from removal of the bodies and burial among social insects to quiet attendance and caregiving among elephants and primates. Researchers in Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo have been able to take a close look at the behavioral responses to the deaths of three individuals — both known and unknown — in gorillas and have reported their findings in PeerJ – the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences.

Scientists from the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, the University of California Davis, Uppsala University, and the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature observed and filmed the behavior of mountain gorillas around the corpses of a 35-year-old dominant adult male and a 38-year-old dominant adult female from the same social group living in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. Both individuals had died a few hours earlier of illnesses possibly linked to their advanced age. Researchers also studied the behavior of a group of Grauer’s gorillas who found the body of a recently deceased adult male in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Researchers predicted that more individuals would engage with the corpses of familiar members of their own group compared to the extra-group mature male and that individuals who shared close social relationships with the deceased would be the ones to spend the most time close to body.

To the researcher’s surprise, the behavioral responses toward the corpses in all three cases were remarkably similar. In all three cases, animals typically sat close to the body and stared at it but they also sniffed, poked, groomed and licked it.

In the two mountain gorilla cases, individuals that shared close social relationships with the deceased were the ones who spent the most time in contact with the corpse. For example, a juvenile male who had established a close relationship with Titus, the dominant mountain gorilla silverback male, after his mother left the group, remained close and often in contact with the body for two days, and slept in the same nest with it. The juvenile son of Tuck, the deceased adult female, groomed the corpse and even tried suckling from it despite having already been weaned, a behavior that could indicate his distress near his mother’s body.

This work is not only of interest regarding how animals perceive and process death, but it also has important conservation implications. Close inspection of corpses can present a serious risk for disease transmission. Contacts between healthy individuals and infected corpses may be a major way through which diseases like Ebola, which have affected and killed thousands of gorillas in Central Africa, spread among gorillas.

###

Images:

Image 1: A Grauer’s gorilla group gathers around the body of a male gorilla encountered in the forest of Kahuzi-Biega National Park. Image Credit: Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (gorillafund.org) – shared under CC BY 4.0

Image 2: A juvenile mountain gorilla inspects the body of his mother for several hours after she died in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. Image Credit: Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (gorillafund.org) – shared under CC BY 4.0

Video 1: A juvenile mountain gorilla touches and grooms the body of his mother in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. Video Credit: Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (gorillafund.org) – video shared under CC BY 4.0

Full Media Pack including image and video:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GkBm_0C5QnS_NuQ09NVofenl60QW3H6o?usp=sharing

Link to the Published Version of the article (quote this link in your story – the link will ONLY work after the embargo lifts): https://peerj.com/articles/6655 your readers will be able to freely access this article at this URL.

Citation to the article: Porter A, Eckardt W, Vecellio V, Guschanski K, Niehoff PP, Ngobobo-As-Ibungu U, Nishuli Pekeyake R, Stoinski T, Caillaud D. 2019. Behavioral responses around conspecific corpses in adult eastern gorillas (Gorilla beringei spp.) PeerJ 7:e6655 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6655

PeerJ is an Open Access publisher of seven peer-reviewed journals and a preprint server. PeerJ‘s mission is to help the world efficiently publish its knowledge. All works published by PeerJ are Open Access and published using a Creative Commons license (CC-BY 4.0). PeerJ is based in San Diego, CA and the UK and can be accessed at peerj.com

PeerJ is the peer-reviewed journal for Biology, Medicine and Environmental Sciences. PeerJ has recently added 15 areas in environmental science subject areas, including Natural Resource Management, Climate Change Biology, and Environmental Impacts.
peerj.com/environmental-sciences

PeerJ has an Editorial Board of over 1,900 respected academics, including 5 Nobel Laureates. PeerJ was the recipient of the 2013 ALPSP Award for Publishing Innovation. PeerJ Media Resources (including logos) can be found at: peerj.com/about/press

For the authors:

Dr. Amy Porter (preferred contact)

[email protected]

+243 828 017 828

Dr Damien Caillaud

[email protected]

+1 530 754 0732

For PeerJ: email: [email protected] , https://peerj.com/about/press/

Note: If you would like to join the PeerJ Press Release list, please register at: http://bit.ly/PressList