What do chimpanzees do when a member of their family or troop dies?
Goodall: We call it a community. If it’s an infant, anything up to five years, the mother will carry the body for a while, usually three days or so, and then it starts to decompose a bit and gradually she’ll move away for longer and longer and then leave it. Sometimes they carry them around until they become mummified. If it’s a mother, the young ones become immensely concerned and will return again and again and again to the mother’s body. A child under five is likely to die of seemingly grief, showing signs like the clinical depression in human orphans. There is no burial. A lot of people ask if there is burial; they seem not to have the same sense of this as elephants do, so there is no burial. Giles: As a teacher of the children of the world, what would you say is the most important lesson that you would teach? Goodall: Well, it’s the lesson, I’ve already said it so many times, that your life matters and that what you do does make a difference. I don’t think there is a more importa
