Eating Your Children
Eating Your Children LINH DINH [Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand on 8/30/23] Polar bears, lions, bamboo rats, dogs and cats have all been observed eating their children. With the last three species, one must wonder if their captivity, no matter how loose or lenient, may have driven them mad. No one likes to be locked down or up. Most interesting to us narcissists are primates. Some baboons, bonobos, orangutans and macaques have also devoured their newborns, but only after these had died and disintegrated. Having lost their shapes, they were no longer there in any meaningful sense, but had become grotesque mockeries of themselves. Is your skull, hair, fingernail or eyelash still representative of you? A recent case drew international attention. At an Italian animal refuge in 2017, a Tonkean macaque carried her dead infant for 25 days. Two days after his death, Evalyne became hysterical. Seeing her reflection in a plastic door, she would stare and scream. Still, she kept caring for her b...