How baboons grieve
This press release from the University of Pennsylvania describes some similarities between how baboons and humans react when they lose an important relationship. The blood levels of glucocorticoids (stress hormones such as cortisol) rise in baboons who are under stress, as they do in humans. And after the death of a family member, female free-ranging baboons sought to widen their social circles and, as they returned to more frequent grooming, their glucocorticoid levels went down. Not that baboons and humans behave exactly the same, but this is an interesting look at perhaps some of the older roots of human mourning behavior. Now I’ve got the REM song “Everybody hurts” running through my mind, especially the line, “Take comfort in your friends.”
