Behaviour with and without Mother: Non-Human Primates

Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy that feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system —with all these exalted powers—still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

It has long been known that isolation and separation from a mother figure can cause distress, expressed in calling and searching, in the young of many species of bird and mammal. The ‘lost piping’ of young ducklings who have become attached to and have temporarily lost a mother figure is a familiar example. Others are the bleating of lambs and the yelping of puppies. Coming nearer man, there are numerous examples in the accounts of monkey and ape infants brought up by human caretakers. All accounts agree on the intensity of protest exhibited whenever a baby primate loses its mother figure, and the intensity of distress that follows when she cannot be found. All agree, too, on the intensity of clinging that occurs after the two are reunited.

For example, Bolwig (1963), in his account of the little patas monkey he reared from a few days old,1 describes how from the first the little monkey ‘showed no fear of man, cried much, and panicked when left alone.… The screaming, with wide open mouth and distorted face, was only heard when the observer moved out of the monkey's immediate reach or sight. On such occasions he would more often than not run staggering to the nearest person in sight.’ Soon the monkey's attachment had become focused on Bolwig himself and then, until three and a