Choi

Christine Choi
Writing 39C
Greg Mcclure
2 August 2015
Chimpanzees Have Emotions Too
Do animals have emotions like humans? More specifically, do chimpanzees that are 98
percent genetically identical to humans have emotions such as grieving or mourning? These are
couple of the main questions scientists focus in the study of animal emotion. When Charles
Darwin first wrote Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, it brought attention to the
topic of animal emotion and affected many researchers such as Goodwall and Matsuzawa to
research in this field until today.
In this writing, I will review and analyze several literatures that indicate that non-human
animals like chimpanzees do have emotions. I will begin this literature review by describing how
chimpanzees show emotional responses to certain circumstances in an experiment. I will then
continue by analyzing few behavioral examples of their mourning and grieving that demonstrates
a feeling of emotion. By going through some of the research results on chimpanzees, the purpose
of this review is to acknowledge that animals are emotional species. It is important to review
these studies because animal cruelty is continuously increasing throughout our society today.
Animals are emotional species that can experience a feeling of sorrow or depression from the
cruelty they face.
Before beginning the review, it is essential to classify the difference between grief and
mourning. According to David Fireman, a director of the Center for Grief Recovery, grief and
mourning are both processes to help the bereaved face the reality that their loved one is gone.

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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 under certain circumstances (Fireman). So in other
words, grief is actually the beginning part of mourning,(Rando) as psychologist Therese A.
Rando says.
In an experiment, Keith Jensen and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology at Leipzig placed a food-laden table in front of a caged chimpanzee observe his
behavior. A string was attached to the table the chimpanzee could pull to collapse the table.
When the chimpanzee was able to reach the food, he resisted pulling the string. But when the
food was removed to the opposite side of the table, the chimpanzee collapsed the table in 30% of
the trials showing an emotion of frustration (New Scientist). Researchers found that chimpanzees
do show the emotion of frustration just like humans in certain situations.
In the book Through a Window, Jane Morris Goodall writes her observation of a young
chimpanzee named Flint. Goodwall is a researcher and founder of the Jane Goodall Institute who
is also well known for her 55 years of study in social and family interactions of chimpanzees.
Flint, a male chimpanzee experienced the death of his mother Flo. Three days after Flos death,
Flint slowly climbed into a tall tree and became very weary and sick with his weakened immune
system. He refused to eat, interact with other chimpanzees, and became extremely depressed.
The last time Goodall saw him alive, she described that he was hollow-eyed, gaunt, and huddled
in the vegetation close to where Flo had died. Flints last short journey before his death was to
the place where Flos body had lain. He stayed there several hours just staring into the water,
curled up and never moved again (Goodall 224).

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Flint died from mourning after his mothers death. Goodalls description of Flint

unquestionably shows that he was deeply 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 in some situations. The emotions of grieving or mourning appear when one
has a great love and compassion toward the other. Flint, a chimpanzee, had a deep affection
toward his mother that made him experience such great despair and grief. This proves that
chimpanzees, also called non-human animals, do have emotions that are similar to what humans
feel.
How do we know and determine if a chimpanzee is 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.
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 (Wong).
Another example of a number of chimpanzees grieving is shown in the photograph below
(see Fig. 1). It was featured in the November issue of the National Geographic Magazine and it
was a moving photo that touched many people. The photograph was taken in September 2008
and it 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 (Berlin).

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Fig. 1. Szczupider, Monica. Dorothy's Funeral. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web.
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." (Heussner) 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 (Heussner).
Chimpanzees tend to understand the sadness of losing a loved one. Even in the past in
1992, Tetsuro Matsuzawa, primatologist and director of Primate Research Institute of Kyoto
University, reported a true story of a mother mourning her infants death. 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

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between her neck and shoulder (see Fig. 2). The mother made Jokro ride on her back in prone
posture just like when she was alive.
As Jokros body started to decompose (see Fig. 3), 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.

Fig. 2. Image by Claudia Sousa

Fig. 3. Image Dora Biro

So why do animals grieve and mourn? Katherine Cronin and Edwin van Leeuwen,
researchers of the MPIs (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) Comparative Cognitive
Anthropology group, published in the American Journal of Primatology that almost nothing is

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known about how primates react to death of close individuals, what they understand about death,
and whether they mourn (MPI). Marc Bekoff, a Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary
biology at the University of Colorado states that, "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 (Bekoff)."
It is difficult to prove why chimpanzees grieve and mourn since they cannot talk like
humans. But one true thing is that their behaviors tell us that they do feel emotions very similar
to humans. They know the feeling of love, compassion, sorrow, grief, despair, depression, and
loneliness.
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 people do not know this and still continue to think that they are superior over
chimpanzees and other nonhuman animals. Including many other animals, chimpanzees are
trapped and prisoned for research, test, and entertainment. Humans abuse these animals and
show such cruelty without knowing that animals can also feel emotions such as pain, fear, and
despair. So now that we know that animals have emotional feelings nothing different to humans,
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.
"Do Chimpanzees Mourn Their Dead Infants?" - Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics. N.p., n.d. 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.
"Spite Is a Uniquely Human Emotion - New Scientist." New Scientist. N.p., n.d. Web. 31
July 2015.
"How to Identify Grief in Animals." Scientific American Global RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 31
July 2015.
Goldstein, Katherine. "The Story Behind National Geographic's Viral Chimp Funeral
Photo." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2015.
Heussner, Ki Mae. "Chimps Mourn Passing of One of Their Own." ABC News. ABC
News Network, 28 Oct. 2009. Web. 01 Aug. 2015.

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"Grief in Animals: It's Arrogant to Think We're the Only Animals Who Mourn."
Psychology Today. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2015.