Watch the horrifying moment a monkey EATS her baby’s corpse

Horrifying new video footage shows a monkey eating her dead baby after she carried it around for days.

The female drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) was filmed in captivity at Dvůr Králové Safari Park, northeast of Prague in the Czech Republic.

After tending to and inspecting her offspring’s body and protecting it from other exercise, the mother began nibbling on bits of it, the footage shows.

Researchers say cases of maternal cannibalism in monkeys are ‘rare’, but no case has ever been seen in captive exercises.

In an earlier example, a mother macaque in Italy ate the remains of her dead baby after carrying the lifeless body around for weeks.

The unusual event was detailed in a newly published study by researchers at the University of Pisa in Italy, who were filming at the safari park in 2020.

“The baby was not in good health at birth, died after a few days and was consumed exclusively by the mother,” they say in the study in the journal Primates.

“We can’t draw firm conclusions about motivation or possible benefits of the mother’s behavior.

“Publication of events like this is important for… evaluations of the wide range of reported postmortem behaviors.”

The mother, named Kumasi, gave birth to the baby at the safari park on August 24, 2020, but nine days later, staff realized it was dead for unknown reasons.

“Although no aggression towards the baby was observed in the first six days, we cannot rule out infanticide,” the experts say.

Scientists then observed the mother Kumasi and other group members handling the corpse before the cannibalism began.

On September 2, Kumasi was seen grooming it while avoiding another adult female, Efuru, who seemed interested in it.

Two young adult males (named Ndolo and Obudu) were also seen trying to hold the dead baby’s gaze – likely attempting to detect any sign of life.

Ndolo also approached Kumasi, touched the baby and made nose-to-nose contact with the mother – possibly a sign of affection.

The next day, the mother began to eat the corpse until it was “almost completely eaten,” before what was left was disposed of by park staff.

Just before eating it, Kumasi and others were seen “dragging and spinning the corpse around,” which may have served to “test the corpse’s responsiveness” and make sure it was really dead.

Overall, according to the academics, this is the first report of post-mortem carrying and cannibalism of an infant in a captive group exercise.

The team says it “cannot rule out a role of captivity in the onset of cannibalism.”

Several cases of cannibalism of dead babies have been reported in wild primates, such as tamarins, orangutans, macaques, chimpanzees and bonobos.

In the case of bonobos and chimpanzees, the mothers ate parts of the corpse and shared meat with other group members.

This contrasts with this new observation, as only Kumasi fed on her baby’s body and protected it when other group members approached.

As for why primates do this, the academics think it’s an evolutionary trait that may help the mother give birth to healthy offspring in the future.

It may help replenish energy stores lost during birth, making her fitter and “improving the mother’s reproductive success” later on.

“Cannibalism may appear to be an adaptive evolutionary trait when we take into account the high reproductive energy investment of primate mothers,” say the authors.

“The absence of the drill mother sharing the carcass with other group members supports the hypothesis of the nutritional benefit of cannibalism.”

The baby’s age at death can also be a factor in whether the mother will eat her baby’s body or not.

It is thought that the younger the primate baby is when it dies, the less likely the mother is to eat it, because more time makes the bond between mother and infant “strong enough.”

Finally, the researchers say their observation “adds another piece to the puzzle” of primate death behavior and cannibalism.