October
29,
2009
Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Funeral Becomes Media Sansation
A dramatic photograph that shows orphaned chimpanzees at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon looking at the body of their deceased matriarch has become a massive internet and media sensation, spurring debate as to whether chimpanzees share human emotions such as “grief” or possess the ability to mourn.
The image, which was taken by Sanaga-Yong volunteer Monica Szczupider, depicts more than a dozen chimpanzees standing in silence while the body of Dorothy, a chimpanzee in her late 40s who died of heart failure, is wheeled past them.
The picture appears in the November 2009 issue of National Geographic, and has prompted media coverage that includes the syndicated television newsmagazine “Inside Edition,” ABC News, Sky News, the New York Post, the London Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and dozens of media websites.
Szczupider said there is no doubt in her mind that the chimpanzees felt the loss.
"Chimps are not silent. They are gregarious, loud, vocal creatures, usually with relatively short attention spans", she said. "But they could not take their eyes off Dorothy, and their silence, more than anything, spoke volumes."
Sanaga-Yong is a charter member of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA), which coordinates activities between facilities that rescue and rehabilitate primates in Africa.
Captured by hunters as an infant, Dorothy was sold as a “mascot” to an amusement park in Cameroon, where she spent the next 25 years being teased, taunted, and taught to drink beer and smoke cigarettes – all while restrained with a chain around her neck.
Rescued by Sanaga-Yong founder Sheri Speede in 2000, Dorothy was already obese and in ill health, but made a remarkable recovery once she reached the sanctuary. She adopted an orphan chimpanzee named Bouboule and became close friends with many others, including Jacky, the group’s alpha male, and Nama, another amusement park refugee.
When Dorothy passed away, Speede said she felt it was only fitting that such an important member of the ad-hoc family be given a proper burial.
“Many people from the villages, including the high chief of our seven villages, came to pay their respects,” Speede said. “No one seemed to wonder for a second whether a funeral service was appropriate for a chimpanzee. They walked to the camp from their villages after learning of Dorothy’s death, without being invited.
“We buried Dorothy beside the enclosure where she lived and beside the tomb of her friend Becky. All the chimpanzees in her family came to watch and mourn with us. When we brought her to the grave site, they asked to see her again, so I took her body close for them to see her a final time. None of them left until the burial was finished.”
Szczupider’s remarkable photograph of the burial has touched off heated debate as to whether chimpanzees and humans share the same emotions.
“Until recently, describing scenes like this in terms of human emotions such as ‘grief’ would have been dismissed by scientists as naïve and anthropomorphising,” wrote Michael Hanlon in the Mail. “But a growing body of evidence suggests that ‘higher emotions’ – such as grieving for a loved one after death, and even a deep understanding of what death is – may not just be the preserve of our species.”
PASA was formed in 2000 to unite the sanctuaries that care for thousands of rescued chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, drills and other endangered primates across Africa. For more information, please visit the PASA website or contact info@pasaprimates.org.
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