Here's one version of a story that has been out wide and far on the blogosphere over the last 48 hours (see also Ian Sample's account in the Guardian yesterday) about observations from the chimp colony at the Blair Drummond Safari Park in Stirlingshire, Scotland, where they appear to demonstrate collective interest/concern/grief over the approaching and eventual death of an elderly female.
The assumption is that the chimps share our faculty of awareness of the approach of death, and significant empathy for the dying.
Chimps are conspicuously social and intelligent animals and it is not surprising to find that they are capable of empathising with the terminal predicament of an important female member of the troupe. Are they, as the scientific authors of the paper on which these articles are based, state, therefore nearer to humans than many of us like to think? Possibly, but it is worth pointing out that displays such as this have been shown by elephants and even dogs. So this empathy may be more a product of sociality than genetic relatedness.
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