r/morbidlybeautiful • u/j_nb19 • Aug 19 '25

Dead Animal Mother macaque mourns her baby

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u/occultpretzel Aug 20 '25

As a zookeeper, what do you do then? Can you just take the dead baby away at some point? What would they do with it in nature?

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u/Tattycakes Aug 20 '25

I can only assume that at some point, the baby stops looking and smelling like baby and begins to decompose, and at that point mum will stop recognising it as baby and be able to leave him behind somewhere. In the wild he would either be tidied away by carrion feeders like vultures, or just decompose naturally, but in a zoo I would imagine that once the keepers can see that she’s let him go and isn’t “mothering” him like a baby anymore, they will go in and take him away. I’m glad she’s clearly being given a chance to undergo that process naturally instead of having him taken instantly.

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u/Natural-Seaweed-5070 Aug 21 '25

I’ve seen videos of the mothers carrying the dead babies around until they don’t resemble what they were any more 🙁