Read the story.
On our recent trip to Brazil we witnessed an extremely rare encounter. None of the local guides have ever heard of anything like it and even a professor in Cuiabá is interested in including the shots plus behavior in one of his studies.
Here is what happened:
In a forest we came across a group of black-tailed marmosets. We started photographing them quite high up the trees. After some time we realized that one of them had a baby, which was not on its back as usual, but dragging behind him, when it was moving across the trees. The marmoset always stopped in between and was inspecting the baby. We already thought it was dead or extremely weak. We continued shooting along. Suddenly the baby dropped out of one of the treetops on the hard forest ground.
The mother immediately sprinted down the tree and picked the baby up. It started checking it out. We were quite upset, as it was obvious that the baby was meanwhile dead. But then something for me completely unexpected happened. The mother started licking the baby and suddenly started biting it. It took me a moment to realize that it started feeding on its own baby. Before the marmoset was extremely shy now it was very close and not even bothering about me and my dad anymore. It got in sort of a blood rush. It started eating the legs; now another family member came down the treetop to observe what was happening. It looked surprised and took some time to simply observe. Then it also joined the feast. They started taking the baby apart – biting the tail off and finally the head as well.
For most humans the first reaction would be “cannibalism” and “this is wrong” – I had the same. Nevertheless when thinking about it from another perspective: in nature there is a daily struggle to survive. Such a source of protein is extremely rare, so it would be a waste to leave it behind and untouched. In the end what went out of the mother went back in. They shared the protein and energy with the entire family.
Similar phenomena to cows eating their placenta.
A very eye-opening encounter.
Location – Araras Lodge
