Eyes of Mourning

Hi Guys,

Here is one of my favorite shots from my Serengeti trip last month, and also one of the most heartbreaking experiences I've had in the wild. This baboon was a very large female, one of the largest and likely oldest females in the large troop near the Seronera swamp. The first day we arrived in Seronera we saw her sitting a way back from the road grooming what looked to be a newborn baboon.

The following day however we saw her much closer and realized that the baby baboon was actually stillborn, but the mother was refusing to accept that her baby was dead. She carried it everywhere with her, holding its tail in her mouth. She tried several times to nurse the baby, and would spend hours each day grooming the baby (she was often by the road so we saw her several times each day).

This continued daily, and by the 6th day we were there, as a result of the heat and arid climate, and the mother's incessant grooming, the baby looked almost mummified- its skin had dried and shrunk, and much of its fur had fallen off. Yet still, the mother wouldn't give up her child.

I think this photo, although it doesn't show the baby, captures the deep sadness the mother baboon was feeling. I think that often we, as humans, love to anthropomorphize animals, imagining that they are feeling what we would feel in a similar situation. Often I tend to think that that is all it is, us putting emotions onto the animals, but in this case, and often with monkeys and apes it seems much more real. The mother's reactions of denial were extremely similar to those of humans. It makes you really understand their intelligence, and feel that much more sympathy for it.

As for the image, I know the fact that the top of the head and the lower jaw are cut off will bother some people, but it doesn't bother me. Sadly she was so close to the road here that I had to lean back out of the top of the car to even get her within the 3m focusing distance of my lens. In my mind the focus of the image is the eyes, and I like the emphasis this crop puts on those eyes, but perhaps since I was there, and this is the best shot I have of the baboon, I am biased. Sadly, despite the frequent sightings of the baboon, she was very shy, and this is the only decent shot I got of her as she usually sat in thick bushes.

Subject: A female Olive Baboon (Papio anubis) grieving the loss of her baby
Location: Serengeti National Park, Northern Tanzania
Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon EF 500mm f/4 IS - shot on pillow from sunroof of Land Cruiser. IS on in mode 1.
Exposure: 1/500ss @ f/5; ISO 400.
Crop: Full frame

Hope you like the shot, and I would love feedback on the image!

-Cam