The death of a mother is a traumatic event for immature offspring in species in which mothers provide prolonged maternal care, such as in long-lived mammals, including humans. Orphan mammals die earlier and have less offspring compared with non-orphans, but how these losses arise remains under debate. Clinical studies on humans and captive studies on animals show that infants whose mothers die when they are young are exposed to chronic stress throughout their lives. However, such chronic stress, which has deleterious consequences on health, can be reduced or even canceled if human orphans are placed in foster families young enough. How stressed orphans are in the wild and whether wild animal orphans are exposed to chronic stress over decades like in humans, remains unknown, especially in species where infants are dependent on their mother for at least the first 10 years of life, like in chimpanzees.
Click here for original story, Wild chimpanzee orphans recover from the stress of losing their mother
Source: Phys.org