‘cuddling’ it to his chest, to which it was clinging. He carried it on his chest throughout
the day, and when he rested it attempted to suckle. At 18.46 he nested with the infant.
On 14 December JM continued to carry the infant but now it was weaker and he had to
support it. No other Sonso individuals showed any interest in JM or the infant. It was
still alive in the evening and JM nested with it again. On 15 December the infant was
dead, but JM was still carrying it. By the following day he was no longer carrying it.
There was no evidence he ate it. It is not known whether the infant was born in the Sonso
community or outside. Nor are JM’s motives known; the authors suggest he may have
been initially motivated by interest in the infant as a ‘possession’ and later lost interest
as the infant weakened and died.
It was suspected that this infant might belong to Mukwano (MK), a young adult
female of the Sonso community who had not been seen for a while; when she
reappeared she had a recently damaged wrist which might have happened during
the snatching.^62 If this was indeed MK’s offspring then it would have been a case of
infanticide of a resident female, as has been seen at other chimpanzee study locations
(see below). MK is the Sonso female who is best known for her disappearances for
longish periods after which she reappears; she may move between communities and this
may also be a background factor to the events described.
In February 2000 the adult female Zimba (ZM) who had an infant male Zig (ZG), was
seen carrying a dead infant (not her own and not sexed). She dropped it and then
Musa (MS) (son of Nambi (NB)) carried the carcass for a while and groomed it. How
the infant died is not known, nor whether it came from another community or was
a Sonso infant.
Infanticide within the community
Within-group infanticide and infant-eating also occur in chimpanzees. At Sonso we
have the case of the death of the infant suspected to belong to the resident female,
Mukwano, described above.
In March 2004, while this book was being written, Katie Slocombe, a research
student, and field assistant Raymond Ogen, heard prolonged screaming and moved
towards it, to find Zimba holding a dead infant male aged about one week old. Nambi
took the infant from Zimba and held on to it for over an hour, inspecting it and biting its
feet gently. Wilma and Mukwano were permitted to come close to the infant but other
individuals^63 were not. At this time Katie and Raymond found Flora lying 10 m away in
dense undergrowth with a fresh bleeding gash on her left arm. Flora tried to approach
the infant but Nambi would not let her come closer than 2 m. After an hour Nambi and
the other females present dropped the infant on the ground and moved away. In this case
it seems that the mother may have been Flora, in which case this was apparently an
150 Infanticide
(^62) Though we have no evidence for this; the injury might have been caused by a snare but it was not a typical
snare injury.
(^63) These included Gashom, Bob, Zana, Kalema and Banura.