The Saunterer puts the measure of humanness not on the capacity to think but on the capacity to grieve. By this, chimpanzees are our equals. Here is naturalist Arthur E. Brown’s account of a chimpanzee grieving:
With the chimpanzee, the evidences of a certain degree of genuine grief were well marked. The two animals had lived together for many months, and were much attached to each other; they were seldom apart and generally had their arms about each other’s neck; they never quarreled, even over a pretended display of partiality by their keeper in feeding them, and if occasion required one to be handled with any degree of force, the other was always prepared to do battle in its behalf on the first cry of fright. After the death of the female, which took place early in the morning, the remaining one made many attempts to rouse her, and when he found this to be impossible his rage and grief were painful to witness. Tearing the hair, or rather snatching at the short hair on his head, was always one of his common expressions of extreme anger, and was now largely indulged in, but the ordinary yell of rage which he set up at first, finally changed to a cry which the keeper of the animals assures me he had never heard before, and which would be most nearly represented by hah-ah-ah-ah-ah, uttered somewhat under the breath, and with a plaintive sound like a moan. With this he made repeated efforts to arouse her, lifting up her head and hands, pushing her violently and rolling her over. After her body was removed from the cage — a proceeding which he violently opposed — he became more quiet, and remained so as long as his keeper was with him, but catching sight of the body once when the door was opened and again when it was carried past the front of the cage, he became violent, and cried for the rest of the day. The day following, he sat still most of the time and moaned continuously.
(Quoted from “Grief in the Chimpanzee,” by Arthur E. Brown. The American Naturalist, Vol. 13. No. 3, 1879. Pp. 173-175.)
Arthur E. Brown was the superintendent of the Philadelphia Zoological Garden.
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