Anderson James R, Yeow Hanling, Hirata Satoshi
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan.
Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Behav Processes. 2021 Dec;193:104538. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2021.104538. Epub 2021 Nov 3.
As in many other species of nonhuman primates, chimpanzee mothers with a dead infant may continue to care for and transport the infant for days, weeks, or even longer. The bereaved females do this despite what humans perceive as the foul odour from the putrefying corpse. Putrescine is a major contributor to the "smell of death," and it elicits behaviours aimed at getting rid of the source of the smell, or escape responses in mammals including humans. However, it has never been shown that the odour of putrescine is aversive to chimpanzees. To address this question, we visually presented six adult chimpanzees with the corpse of a small bird, or a stuffed glove, in association with putrescine, ammonia, or water, and recorded the chimpanzees' reactions. The apes spent significantly less time near the object when it was paired with putrescine than the other substances, although they showed no signs of increased arousal or anxiety. We interpret the findings as evidence of an aversion to the smell of death in chimpanzees, discuss the implications for understanding the continued maternal-like behaviour of bereaved female chimpanzees, and suggest future research directions for the field of comparative evolutionary thanatology.
与许多其他非人类灵长类动物一样，失去幼崽的黑猩猩母亲可能会在数天、数周甚至更长时间内继续照顾并搬运死去的幼崽。尽管在人类看来，腐烂尸体散发着恶臭，但这些失去幼崽的雌性黑猩猩仍会这样做。腐胺是“死亡气味”的主要成分，它会引发旨在消除气味来源的行为，或者在包括人类在内的哺乳动物中引发逃避反应。然而，从未有研究表明腐胺的气味会让黑猩猩感到厌恶。为了解决这个问题，我们向六只成年黑猩猩视觉呈现一只小鸟的尸体或一只填充手套，并分别将其与腐胺、氨水或水放在一起，然后记录黑猩猩的反应。与其他物质相比，当物体与腐胺放在一起时，黑猩猩在其附近停留的时间明显更少，不过它们并未表现出兴奋或焦虑加剧的迹象。我们将这些发现解读为黑猩猩对死亡气味厌恶的证据，讨论了这一发现对于理解失去幼崽的雌性黑猩猩持续表现出类似母性行为的意义，并为比较进化死亡学领域提出了未来的研究方向。
