Department of Anthropology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA.
Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Guanacaste, Costa Rica.
Primates. 2021 Nov;62(6):1037-1043. doi: 10.1007/s10329-021-00949-z. Epub 2021 Oct 9.
On 5 February 2021, we observed the first instance of female-committed infanticide followed by cannibalism in a long-studied (> 35 years) population of wild white-faced capuchins (Cebus imitator) in the Santa Rosa Sector of the Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica. The events leading up to and including the infanticide and cannibalism were observed and documented ad libitum, with segments digitally recorded, and a post-mortem necropsy performed. Here we detail our observations and evaluate the events within the framework of leading adaptive explanations. The infanticide may have been proximately motivated by resource competition or group instability. The circumstances of the observed infanticide provided support for the resource competition, adoption avoidance, and social status hypotheses of infanticide, but not for the exploitation hypothesis, as neither the perpetrator nor her kin consumed the deceased infant. The subsequent cannibalism was performed by juveniles who observed the infanticide and may have been stimulated by social facilitation and their prior experience of meat consumption as omnivores. To our knowledge, cannibalism has been documented only once before in C. imitator, in an adjacent study group, with the two cases sharing key similarities in the context of occurrence and manner of consumption. These observations add to our growing knowledge of the evolutionary significance of infanticide and its importance as a reproductive strategy in nonhuman primates.
2021 年 2 月 5 日，我们在哥斯达黎加瓜纳卡斯特保护区圣罗莎区一个经过长期研究 (>35 年) 的野生白面卷尾猴（Cebus imitator）种群中观察到首例雌性杀婴后食人行为。杀婴和食人事件的发生及后续过程均被自由观察和记录，部分过程被数字化记录，并进行了尸检。在此，我们详细描述了我们的观察结果，并在主要适应性解释框架内对这些事件进行了评估。杀婴行为可能是由资源竞争或群体不稳定引起的。观察到的杀婴事件的情况支持了杀婴的资源竞争、避免收养和社会地位假说，但不支持剥削假说，因为凶手及其亲属都没有食用死去的婴儿。随后的食人行为是由观察到杀婴行为的青少年实施的，可能受到社会促进和他们作为杂食动物吃肉经验的刺激。据我们所知，在 C. imitator 中，此前仅在一个相邻的研究小组中记录过一次食人行为，这两个案例在发生背景和消费方式上有很多相似之处。这些观察结果增加了我们对杀婴行为的进化意义及其作为非人类灵长类动物生殖策略的重要性的认识。
