Human emotions of define relationships. We may think only humans experience emotions like kindness, empathy, happiness, or grief, but a recent video shot by BBC reporters shows that primates have them too.
BBC put a spot spy camera inside a baby langur doll and placed it in a colony of gray langurs in Rajasthan in western India. Langurs are a species of old world monkeys spread across the Indian sub-continent.
The Langurs thought the baby to be real and tried to make friends with it. One even tried to babysit it.
When the baby replica fell down from a tree and lay motionless on the ground, the Langurs thought it to be injured. They came near, trying to wake it up and caress it. Finally they determined the baby was dead.
In grief, the Langurs stopped their usual screeches and a profound silence engulfed them. The camera then captured them cuddling and supporting each other. It was as if the whole community got together to cope with the tragedy.
The video is a part of BBC series ‘Spy in the Wild’ and is shot using replicas of various animal species with cameras hidden in them.
