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Christine Choi
Writing 39C
Greg Mcclure
19 July 2015
HCP Do chimpanzees grieve?
From the early days till today, animals are used for food, cosmetics, entertainment,
medication, clothing, research, and test. The number of animal use for these categories is
increasing by the growing population and industrialization but many people are indifferent
towards animal usage and cruelty. Many think humans have the privilege to arbitrarily use the
animals since they define them as emotionless species but this is not quite true. Here, I will
review some writings scientists have researched about chimpanzee grieving and mourning which
demonstrate that animals, especially the chimpanzees, do feel emotions.
The review discusses several examples of chimpanzees starting from a research
document by Jane Goodwall. She is one of the researchers who have studied chimpanzees since
the past and has influenced many scientists until today that chimpanzees do have the emotions of
grieving and mourning. It is important to review these studies because animal cruelty is
increasing continuously. Many people still do not believe that animals do have emotions like
humans.
According to David Fireman, grief and mourning are both processes to help the bereaved
face the reality that their loved one is gone. The only difference is that grief helps the mourner
recognize the loss and get ready for the longer experience of mourning. Mourning is a more
encompassing phenomenon that involves more than grief and can last for years if not forever

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under certain circumstances. So as Therese A. Rando says, Grief is actually the beginning part
of mourning.
Jane Morris Goodall, a primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and one of the worlds
foremost experts on chimpanzees, writes an example of their mourning. She has been studying
social and family interactions of chimpanzees for more than 55 years and she has been working
on conservation and animal welfare issues. She is also the author of the book Through a Window
(2010) where she wrote her observation of a young chimpanzee, Flint, who died from mourning
after his mothers death. Goodalls description of Flint unquestionably shows that he was
grieving the loss of his mother. Just like humans fall into depression after a loss, chimpanzees
also feel the emotion of sorrow and loneliness that can even lead to death. She clearly proves that
chimpanzees do have emotions.
"Never shall I forget watching as, three days after Flo's death, Flint climbed slowly into a
tall tree near the stream. Flint became increasingly lethargic, refused food and, with his immune
system thus weakened, fell sick. The last time I saw him alive, he was hollow-eyed, gaunt and
utterly depressed, huddled in the vegetation close to where Flo had died. . . . the last short
journey he made, pausing to rest every few feet, was to the very place where Flo's body had lain.
There he stayed for several hours, sometimes staring and staring into the water. He struggled on
a little further, then curled up- and never moved again." (Goodall 224)
How do we know and determine if a chimpanzee if grieving? Barbara King, a Chancellor
Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary, carefully establishes the criteria
for grief. She says that grief is suspected only when certain conditions are met. First, animals
choose to spend time together as friends or a family, beyond survival-oriented behaviors.
Second, when one of his or her loved ones die, the survivors normal behavior routine changes.

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One may reduce the time to eat or sleep, obtain a certain posture or facial expression that
indicates the sign of depression or anxiety, or commonly fail to thrive.
Another example of a number of chimpanzees grieving is shown in a photo that touched
many people. The photo taken in September 2008 captures chimpanzees all gazing on the dead
body of Dorothy as she is wheeled away at the Cameroons Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue
Center. According to the photographer, some chimps showed aggression and frustration but the
most stunning reaction was the recurring silence that occurred from these non-silent creatures.

After seeing the photograph, the director of the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Patti
Ragan, said "All great apes feel sorrow when they lose someone in their family." (abc) She
added that the DNA sequences of human and chimpanzee are 99 percent similar. She shared
another story in her center when a male chimpanzee named Charlie died while he was with his
family. They were crying and very distressed. Charlie's mate, Oopsie, was so stricken with grief
that she refused food and wouldn't leave her nest for 2 or 3 days," Ragan said.

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Chimpanzees tend to understand the sadness of losing a loved one. Even in the past in

1992, Tetsuro Matsuzawa reported a true story of a mother mourning her infants death.
Matsuzawa is a primatologist and a director of the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto
University. At Bossou, Guinea, West Africa, an infant chimpanzee named Jokro died at the age
of 2.5 years from a respiratory illness. Her mother, Jire, who was 35 years old carried the dead
body for at least 27 days. Jire took Jokros dead body on the day she died and placed it on her
back, holding Jokros wrist between her neck and shoulder. The mother made Jokro ride on
her back in prone posture just like when she was alive.
As Jokros body started to decompose, Jire chased away the flies circling her dead infant
and continued to carry the body around. Even when there was a fight within the community, Jire
never released Jokros hand. She carried her daughter as if she was alive and kept the body safe
from falling as she climbs. Jokros body has dried out on the 15th day but Jire continued to carry
the body cautiously. She even started to clean Jokros face and groomed her remains as if she
were still alive. It wasnt the fact that Jire did not know her daughter was dead. She knew Jokro
was dead by her decomposing body and smell. The mother of the dead infant showed so much
grieve and love toward her lost baby. Matsuzawa writes, And so an infant chimpanzee lived and
died in the forest of Bossou. She was 2-and-a-half when her life ended, but I observed how she
remained with her community for a month beyond her death.

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So why do animals grieve and mourn? There are variety of reasons such as a report,
published in the American Journal of Primatology, said almost nothing is known about how
primates react to death of close individuals, what they understand about death, and whether they
mourn. Another reason that Marc Bekoff, a Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary
biology at the University of Colorado says, "it's been suggested that grief reactions may allow for
the reshuffling of status relationships or the filling the reproductive vacancy left by the deceased,
or for fostering continuity of the group."
In conclusion, chimpanzees do mourn and grieve like humans do. They experience
emotions through love and death, which proves that not all animals are emotionless species.
However many of the people do not know this fact and still think that they are superior over
chimpanzees and other animals.

Including many other animals, chimpanzees are used for

research, tests, and entertainment that keep them trapped and prisoned. Humans abuse these
animals and show such cruelty without knowing that they have can feel emotions such as pain,
unhappiness, and despair. So now that we know that animals are nothing different to humans
with emotional feelings, what can we do to make them live in delight?

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Works Cited

Fireman, David. "The Difference Between Grief and Mourning." - Article by David Fireman,
LCSW. Web. 15 July 2015.
Goodall, Jane. Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.
Wong, Kate. "How to Identify Grief in Animals." Scientific American Global RSS. N.p., n.d.
Web. 18 July 2015.
Heussner, Ki Mae. "Chimps Mourn Passing of One of Their Own." ABC News. ABC News
Network, 28 Oct. 2009. Web. 16 July 2015.
Matsuzawa, T. (1997). The death of an infant chimpanzee at Bossou, Guinea. Pan Africa News,
4:4-6.
"Grief of an Emperor Penguin Mother Will Rock Your Soul." Psychology Today. Web. 19 July
2015.