great apes, and the apes who eat them
And this one has a pretty gross video. Don’t watch it.
Dellatore is reluctant to make any definitive claims as to why the behaviour occurred. But he suspects that the mothers’ stressed upbringing may have triggered their later actions.
“Semi-wild orangutans are all exposed to considerable traumas, such as witnessing the deaths of their own mothers,” he says. To feed the pet trade, an orangutan is often captured from the wild as an infant, with its mother being killed as she would not otherwise let her baby go. Captive orangutans also suffer long periods of social isolation.
“Studies have shown that early social deprivation can have deleterious effects on later levels of cognitive ability. It is possible that the cannibalism events are an extension of these effects,” he says.
