AsianScientist (Aug. 01, 2025) – The ability to grieve for dying loved ones was long considered a distinctly human trait — an emotional complexity thought to separate us from animals. Japanese macaques live in large and highly complex social groups, and their social behaviors have been studied for decades. The researchers encountered several rare opportunities to closely observe how individual free-ranging macaques responded to their dying and deceased companions. For instance, many macaques clearly avoided the presence of maggots in both dying and dead macaques, likely indicating an aversion to maggots. “More observations of death-related events in more species will be needed to fully understand the emotional responses of non-human primates to the dead,” says Nakamichi.