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Friend or foe, gorillas groom their dead
Rare sightings of gorillas reacting to bodies of both known and unknown gorillas give researchers new insight into how they deal with death.
At first the Grauer’s gorillas’ displays were subtle as they quietly gathered around the dead silverback, staring, touching, and poking. Some, especially the younger gorillas, placed a hand on the body, grooming it and licking it or their own fingers.
Chimanuka's family didn't know the dead gorilla, but they seemed to slowly take more interest in him. Researchers with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, which has been studying gorillas for more than 50 years, had been shadowing Chimanuka, the head of a gorilla troop in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park, in 2016, when the strange scene unfolded.
"At first we didn't know what it was," says Amy Porter, one of the lead researchers. "We couldn't see it. We thought,
