pic nicked from here
Chimps seem to have a similar reaction to the death of a group member as humans. No, they don’t all put on black ties and get drunk around the corpse. Rather, they comfort the dying and then appear to experience trauma. Some chimp mothers even refuse to let go of their dead baby for really long periods of time. They just keep carrying it around. No matter how disgusting that baby gets.
It’s always dangerous to assign human characteristics to other animals but I don’t think this one is too much of a stretch. Most mammals can tell when something is no longer there. Even my cat howls at the door when its human-shaped, food supply has been gone for longer than usual. And that cat is no chimp.
