Capuchin monkeys kidnapped children of another kind – and the deadly kidnapping are caught on the camera

The child’s monkey clings to the back of the older male monkey, and its small fingers that offend the fur. But it is not relevant, not even the same type.

Scientists have monitored sudden evidence of what they describe as kidnapping the monkey while reviewing video footage from a small island of Panama. Caboshine monkeys were seen carrying at least 11 howls between 2022 and 2023, The researchers said Monday.

“This was a horrific discovery,” said Zoe Goldsburo, a behavioral environment at the Max Planck Institute for animal behavior in Germany. “We haven’t seen anything like this in the animal kingdom.”

Monkery motives are still under investigation. Capsenine are cats the size of cats in South America and Central America. They are long -standing and smart and learn new behaviors from each other. I learned one group of Kabuchians in Panama to use stone tools to break open nuts and seafood.

Goldsberg and other researchers at Max Planck and the Smithsonian Institute for Equatorial Research created more than 80 cameras to study the use of cabin tools, but they were surprised by seeing the first howl children to appear in early 2022.

Goldsburo initially found four different children from the howls being pregnant. In almost all cases, the perpetrator was the same male. The scholars mentioned them the title of Capuchin Joker because the small scar on the side of its mouth reminded them of the villain of “Batman”.

Initially, scientists believed that this was “the intimate story of a strange booshin that adopts these children,” said Goldsburo.

Then the researchers began finding other cases that did not include Joker. Scientists were confused because the cabin did not eat or prey on children, and they seemed to enjoy playing with them.

Goldsburo said that they eventually realized that these kidnappings were a social tradition or a “innovation” between the young Kabochain on the island.

A dark fate for kidnapped children

The shots showed cables walking and bombing stones tools with the children’s howl on their backs. But the cameras did not pick up the kidnapping moments, which scientists likely said in the trees, as the howl spends most of their time.

“Our window in this story is restricted,” said co -author Margaret Cruvot of Max Blanc and Samithonian. The results were Publish Monday In the current Biology Journal.

The researchers said in most cases or in all cases, he died. Esit monkeys are usually performed by their mothers while they are still bound. All children in the video – from a few weeks to a few months of age – were very young so that they were not lost.

“An optimistic part of me wants some to believe that he escaped and returned to their mothers, but we do not know,” Crovot said.

Videos have recorded some of the young male males who are still carrying the children who died, most likely from hunger. Many animals – from Gorilla to Orcas – have been observed Carry their dead descendantsAlthough scientists are not sure of the reasons.

Why did the male cables do that? There were no signs of intentional aggression against children and they were not eaten, and they were excluded from predators.

“We all spent hours destroying our brains – why will they do it?” Goldsburo said.

She said that the first thing that children kill may have a “care motivation” or the instinct of parents, because he showed kindness interacting with infants. Then four other males copied his actions.

The researchers said that they did not believe that the cabosheen intentionally harmed the children. To date, it is known that only one group of cabinn kidnapped.

“The remarkable behavioral contrast across social groups of the same type,” said Catherine Carackford, a primitive specialist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France, which did not participate in the study.

Cultural innovations that spread among animals are rare, but no one has heard.

Barrett has previously studied the Capuchin in Costa Rica, which suddenly began preparing the pulp, before it was bored of this direction.

In the eighties of the last century, the deadly whales of wearing dead salmon took on their heads off the northwestern coast. This trend returned after decades when Orcas was monitored again and wearing this “Salmon Hats” last year.

Agence France-Press contributed to this report.