Family idyll. Animal cubs Varvara Meshik Head of the Primate Department of the Moscow Zoo, Ph.D.

40-year-old chimpanzee Yutta, the mother of young Mu (2 years old), had a serious problem with her teeth - two incisors were broken. Primates live in the Aalborger Zoo, Copenhagen. The stumps were so short that veterinarian Trin Hammer Jensen decided

40-year-old chimpanzee Yutta, the mother of young Mu (2 years old), had a serious problem with her teeth - two incisors were broken. Primates live in the Aalborger Zoo, Copenhagen.

The stumps were so short that veterinarian Trin Hammer Jensen decided to have them removed.

“As soon as we started administering anesthesia to Jutta, Mu became so nervous that we decided to leave her next to her mother.”

For the doctors who performed the operation, the excited baby chimpanzee meant additional stress. Mu fidgeted a lot and didn't want to sit still. In addition, she almost bit through the wires with which we regulated Jutta's heart rate. However, everything went according to plan and the operation was a success.

Chimpanzees have lost two teeth. Now Jutta and Mu are doing well, they were returned to the rest of the primates.

Monkeys are not in vain considered relatives of people. In particular, chimpanzees demonstrate achievements unprecedented in the animal world, demonstrating their high intellectual abilities. Many studies show that these primates have self-awareness and self-identification, so it is not surprising that family ties are so important to them.

Monkeys: exemplary mothers

We all know the expression that reflects the social nature of human nature: “No man is an island” - literally meaning “Man is not an island”, a person cannot live alone. Most primates - including marmosets and monkeys - are social animals that spend their entire lives in a group. And the closest bond in a group is that of a mother and her cub. Monkey babies seek contact with their mother as soon as they are born - they cling to their mother's belly, warm and soft, where they find food and protection; and a little older, the monkeys move on the back of their mother, thus occupying an excellent position for a safe view of the world around them. Mother monkeys do not leave their babies alone - on the contrary, they carry them everywhere and everywhere, thereby further strengthening the bond between mother and child.
Mother and baby - the strongest bond

Newborn babies are a source of joyful excitement in the primate group. However, mother monkeys are extremely jealous in protecting their cubs from the enthusiastic hands of other relatives. Only over time does the mother monkey allow others to hold her baby, and they caress, comb and play with him. The primate community plays an active role in raising children. Thus, macaques and most baboons live in communities with very close female bonds, and first-time mothers are treated very carefully, fed and trained. Female vervet monkeys even help each other care for their young.

Yet the closest bond in primate groups is between mother and calf. Even adult male chimpanzees, after a quarrel with the rest, go to their aged mothers to be reassured and cared for. The females of most primate species stay with their mothers throughout their lives, and as the mothers age, their daughters take care of them. Primatologist Jessica talks about a very old rhesus macaque that lived on an island off the coast of Costa Rica: “She was 31 years old - very old for a macaque. She was so weak that she could barely keep up with a group of her relatives moving around the island. But she was always by her side youngest daughter already a mother herself. She spent a lot of time next to her mother, once an alpha female, and now only at the bottom of the social hierarchy. She was often seen next to her old mother, when she was sleeping - her daughter was combing her. If necessary, the daughter was the first to rush to the defense of her mother.

Human exploitation of the mother-infant bond

AT wild nature the hunters hired by the experimental scientists to capture the monkeys use the mother-child bond to their advantage. Mother primates are killed right in the trees, and then baby monkeys are taken away, who in a panic cling to the body of a dead mother. If other monkeys approach the body of a killed monkey, they are also caught. Many weaned babies soon fall ill and die due to insufficient and unsuitable food, trapped in cramped baskets during transport away from their homes and families.

The trauma of loss

For baby primates that are born right in the lab, life is just as tragic. Here, the cubs are taken from their mother three days after birth. Toddlers experience severe stress and are often unable to develop normal social relationships later on. Monkeys are usually kept in cramped single cages, which adds to the stress.

Primate mothers naturally scream and fight when the babies clinging to their bellies are taken from them. For them, the trauma of losing a cub is also very deep.

“Newborn monkeys who are blind or have disabilities locomotive apparatus receive all the necessary care from the mother. The main thing is that the baby is able to cling to the mother's belly - this is the only test that needs to be passed. It turned out - and the mother will accept and love her baby. And then she will carefully support the cub, even if he is too weak and it is difficult for him to hold on. The mother monkey becomes extremely attached to her cub. And even if the baby died, she will carry with her a limp little body for whole days: very carefully, gently, leaving only for a short time while she eats. Gradually, the distance between the mother and the object of her unfulfilled hopes grows. She goes farther and farther in search of food. Gradually, she returns to the already dried body for shorter periods of time, until one day, reluctantly and with obvious doubts, the mother monkey leaves the body, which by that time had turned into a shrunken ball of fur.
(Sarah Blaffer Hardy, anthropologist and sociobiologist-primatologist).

In labs, workers separate mother and baby by placing the mother monkey in a so-called “squeeze cage,” a metal wire contraption with a panel at the back that can be pushed forward with two handles. The mother and the cub clinging to her are pressed against the front wall of the cage, so that the limbs, body and muzzle of the resisting mother are literally flattened by metal bars. The "pressure cage" is equipped with leg holes, which are usually used to fix the limbs of an adult monkey in order to give an injection or draw blood. In the case of a mother and calf, the technician grabs the tail or limb of the calf through these holes and drags it towards itself, tearing it off the mother's breast. If she has the strength and opportunity, the mother resists and tries to hold her baby, so that the technician almost tears off his limb, trying to tear it off the mother. During this "procedure" the mother screams or makes sounds like barking; The baby is also screaming. Both, mother and cub, defecate - from fear and stress. The baby is eventually pulled out through the leg hole.

Primate mothers form a close bond with their newborn calf almost immediately after birth. Researchers testify that mothers are able to distinguish their children from others already in the first days after their birth. The babies of most species of macaques and baboons depend on their mothers for a long period; breastfed for at least a year. The grown-up brothers and sisters of the newborn remain close to the mother, and while she feeds the newborn, they learn what to eat, where to sleep, how to behave in case of danger. Therefore, it is not surprising that when a mother is deprived of her cub, she is very for a long time is experiencing loss.

Primatologist Jessica Ghana and Nancy Megna, a former laboratory animal care assistant, described what they saw at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center: “A mother screams, waiting in vain for a response from a baby stolen from her, or cries in grief Her cries are like mournful lamentations. She does this all the time, sometimes sitting apart from the rest of the group of monkeys, sometimes sitting under the cage door and looking out. When she saw a passing car belonging to research center She began to scream even more desperately. If a worker passed by the cage, the monkey walked along the cage next to him, looking into his face and continuing to cry mournfully. The little ones also cry plaintively and mournfully, in the hope that they will be returned to their mothers. This depressing, traumatic experience recurs over and over again as monkey mothers are robbed of their babies by researchers.”
http://www.stopanimaltests.com/Getactive.asp
http://www.stopanimaltests.com/primates-maternalbonds.asp#strongestbond

Man is far from the only creature capable of experiencing tender parental feelings. In the new section "Our Dairy Brothers", which we are opening in this issue of the magazine, we will talk about representatives of that class of living beings, to which we belong. The class of mammals combines the most diverse animals in size and appearance - from a tiny pygmy shrew the size of a newborn's fist and weighing a little more than a gram to African elephant 4.5 m high and weighing 7.5 tons and a blue whale, whose length reaches 33 m and weighs 150 tons. What unites them all? Every schoolchild knows the answer to this question: like a person, they all have mammary glands and feed their cubs with milk.

Varvara Meshik
Head of the Primate Department of the Moscow Zoo, Ph.D.

It is logical to start acquaintance with the world of mammals with our closest relatives - great apes. This is a suborder of the order of primates, which includes two families - small great apes, or gibbons, and large great apes, or pongids (they are divided into three genera: orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas). Great apes live in tropical forests and the plains of Africa (chimpanzees and gorillas), Southeast Asia, including Malacca and Sumatra (gibbons), on the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra (orangutans). They live in small herds or family groups. Large apes build nests for themselves at night, while gibbons sleep in dense foliage in the middle of the trees. They usually move through the trees only with the help of their hands. They feed on plant foods, sometimes they eat bird eggs and chicks, as well as ants and termites (chimpanzees). Chimpanzees and gorillas are considered closest to humans. Sometimes, bonobos, close relatives of chimpanzees, are distinguished as a separate genus of great apes, although they have a number of significant differences. It is bonobos that more than other monkeys resemble people in terms of metabolic characteristics, social organization and behavior. Chimpanzees are more "advanced" in instrumental behavior, gorillas are known for their ability to sign communication.

Most mammals and higher primates is no exception, they are distinguished by a gentle and attentive attitude towards their offspring. The more highly organized animals are, the more helpless their young are born, the longer their childhood period lasts, the more they have to learn.

The duration of pregnancy in great apes approaches that of humans: 210-235 days for gibbons, 225 days for chimpanzees, 275 days for orangutans, 250-290 days for gorillas. Great apes breed all year round, females, like women, have menstrual cycles (lasting 30 - 40 days), puberty begins at 7 - 10 years. Life expectancy is from 30 to 60 years.

Due to the fact that the specialization of the Moscow Zoo is the breeding of orangutans, we will tell you more about them.

orangutans are large monkeys. The growth of adult animals reaches 130 - 150 cm with an average body weight of 100 - 150 kg (especially large males in captivity can weigh up to 300 kg). Female orangutans are much smaller than males. At 10 - 12 years old, orangutans start a family, and they choose their life partner quite carefully. AT natural conditions the male occupies a vast territory, within which there are territories of several females (with cubs). He visits them one by one, sometimes they all gather together. A pregnant female orangutan has a special social status(for example, in captivity, she is the first to go to the feeder, she is especially popular as a grooming partner 1). Childbirth occurs very quickly, the mother immediately takes the baby (a newborn orangutan weighs about one and a half kilograms) in her arms, licks him, eats the membranes and afterbirth, bites the umbilical cord and applies it to the chest. From this moment on, for two or three weeks, the mother will carry the newborn cub all the time in the literal sense of the word in her arms, until he himself learns to hold tightly to her hair with his fingers. For another 3-4 years, he will have to eat mother's milk, and for the first two years he is practically inseparable from his mother. By six months, the baby begins to walk. A one-year-old orangutan already has all the milk teeth, which are replaced by permanent ones by the age of seven. Orangutans are very clean, the mother carefully monitors hygiene: she licks the baby's face and genitals. The pope does not take part in childbirth and, in general, treats both the very process of the birth of an heir and subsequent communication with him with some apprehension. This is facilitated by the behavior of the mother, who is very gentle and reverent towards the baby and is ready to protect him from any dangers. Subsequently, when the baby grows up, communication and games with dad occur at the initiative of the cub. In general, a calm, friendly atmosphere reigns in the orangutan family, the baby is never punished, the attitude towards him varies from rudely good-natured to outbursts of tender love.

1 Grooming is a comfortable behavior in mammals, expressed in grooming and addressed to another individual. In primates, it serves as a mechanism for maintaining the hierarchy (individuals of low rank cleanse high-ranking ones), as well as an element of sexual behavior.

A chimpanzee cub named Rubin (Ruben) was born at the Lowry Park Zoo (Florida, USA) eight months ago.

A day after giving birth, his mother Rukia died of complications, and other members of the chimpanzee community were indifferent to the baby and even his father showed no interest in him. Therefore, Rubin came under the care of the zoo staff.

(Total 14 photos)

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1. They wrapped him in blankets like a human baby, fed him from a bottle, rejoiced at the first tooth and the first steps on two legs. But time passed, Rubin grew up, became bigger and more active. He began to climb branches, eat solid food, and people realized that he still needed one of his own to raise a normal chimpanzee out of him, and not a tamed animal.

2. At the end of July, they began to look for a suitable Rubina foster mother zoos in America. A suitable monkey was soon found at the Oklahoma City Zoo. Her name was Kito. According to primate caretaker Robin Newby, Kito has a very maternal instinct and she could well take care of someone else's cub, as she allows other chimpanzee cubs to approach her and does not show any aggression towards them and is quite friendly. them friendly.

3. Lee Ann Rottman, who took care of Rubin like her own child for seven months, was very hard to part with him. But still, she left him at the Oklahoma Zoo when she realized that he would be much better there and was convinced that other chimpanzees accepted him into their group.

4. According to Lee Ann, it was like introducing the family to their adopted child. Chimpanzees were introduced into the group gradually. Rubin initially stayed in a separate room, but could see other monkeys through the partition and they could see him. They were very interested in the new tenant and even climbed higher to get a better look at him.

5. Then Rubin was introduced directly to his potential new mother, Kito. All this took place in a very tense atmosphere under the close supervision of people. But Kito, as it turned out, understood everything. She began to build a nest, walked around the enclosure and collected rags and straw, as she would have done if she had given birth to a mother. Soon a little chimpanzee was handed over to her and she adopted him as if she had always been his mother.

6. Rubin himself seemed to be very surprised by this, in the photo he got a completely amazed expression on his face. More recently, his mother was a large smooth-skinned woman, and suddenly she turned out to be a dark and hairy monkey, the same as himself!

7. Ruby (left) with his mother Kito and her eldest son Siri

8. But very soon he clung to her back like a mother and clung to her like a mother and even established relations with his "stepfather" - the largest male of the group named Mwami (Mwami), who was the father of Kito's older cubs and looked seemed very menacing. Newby says she saw them pursing each other's lips in greeting, as is the custom among chimpanzees.

9. According to Laura Bottaro, Senior Mammal Curator, this is the second successful adoption of alien chimpanzees in the history of the Oklahoma Zoo, and this further strengthened the positive reputation of the zoo.

Unfortunately, among the monkeys, cases of physical disability are not uncommon. Many of them lose limbs in traps left by hunters for other animals. However, among chimpanzees there are also disabled people from birth. But if the wild nature is not a fertile springboard for studying the social skills of anthropoid apes, then in the conditions of reserves, research on the behavioral skills of chimpanzees becomes possible.

Baby chimpanzee with symptoms of Down syndrome

A team of scientists has been keeping a close eye on a family of chimpanzees living in the Mahale Mountains, in national park Tanzania. It was there that a sick cub was seen with signs resembling Down syndrome. Initially, the researchers did not notice any abnormalities in two newborn chimpanzees, one of whom, a girl, was given the name XT11. The mother of the cubs, Christina, took equal care of each of her offspring.

However, 6 months after birth, the first signs of developmental deviations in XT11 began to be noted. Her brother was more active, able to sit up by himself and showed social interest. The sick baby, on the contrary, did not show social interest to other members of the group of wild chimpanzees, she could not sit on her own and was completely dependent on her mother.

Symptoms of the disease

Along with the alleged mental disability, scientists have noticed some physical abnormalities in XT11. The baby had an impressive hernia on her stomach, visible injuries of the spine, areas on the body with bald patches, an extra finger on her left hand. In addition, she often kept her mouth half open. Despite all this, mother's care kept XT11 alive for nearly two years.

Mother's amazing behavior

In this study, the 37-year-old chimpanzee Christina aroused the greatest interest of scientists. Previously, scientists have never seen how mothers in the wild interact with their disabled babies. When Christina realized that something was wrong with the cub, she completely adapted her usual behavior to the new realities: she carried the offspring on her chest, held it while feeding, and refused to hunt her favorite delicacy - wild ants. In addition to this, Christina's eldest child also helped her mother in caring for a disabled person.

Collective interaction of the family

So, the poor cub could not move independently and constantly clung to the mother. Christina adapted to this, moving with only one free hand, while the other at that time was busy supporting the cub with a disability. Christina was ready to make all sorts of sacrifices, even completely abandon ant catching. However, she came to the rescue eldest daughter, who temporarily took XT11 under her care, thereby allowing a tired mother to get enough of her favorite treat.

Hint of social activity in wild monkeys

This study gives us a clear idea that there is social care and mutual aid in the wild chimpanzee environment. It was previously thought that great apes did not show signs social support and that this phenomenon in the process of evolution became an exclusive feature of ancient people. In fact, everything turned out to be somewhat different. It turns out that not only people can take care of their own kind.