To our human hearts, the scene is heartbreaking and confusing: a newborn baby monkey cries in hunger, nuzzling against its mother, only to be pushed away or ignored. The mother seems cold, even cruel. Why is she doing this? When a mother monkey refuses her baby milk, it is rarely without a deep, instinctual reason rooted in survival.
First, the mother may be exhausted, ill, or malnourished herself. Producing milk requires tremendous energy. If she is starving or sick, her body may instinctively shut down lactation to preserve her own life. She cannot sustain what she does not have. In the harsh calculus of nature, her own survival must come first, as a dead mother guarantees a dead infant.
Second, she might sense that the infant is too weak or has a birth defect. Her instincts are programmed to invest resources in offspring with the highest chance of surviving to adulthood. If the newborn is critically frail or visibly impaired, she may abandon it early to conserve her strength for a future, healthier baby. It is a brutal efficiency, not malice.
Third, environmental stress can trigger abandonment. If the troop is under threat from predators, facing a food shortage, or constantly on the move, a mother—especially a young, inexperienced one—may become so overwhelmed that her maternal instincts fail. Her panic overrides her care.
Finally, in rare cases, especially with first-time mothers, there can be a simple failure of the maternal bond. She may not understand what to do, or the hormonal trigger to care for the infant misfires.
While it seems like a tragic rejection, this behavior is a painful evolutionary strategy. However, this is where human compassion can intervene. In sanctuaries, such rejected infants are given a second chance. They are fed with specialized formula, swaddled for warmth, and cared for around the clock. The mother’s refusal, though natural, is not the final word. For the baby monkey, a bottle from a gentle human hand can become the new source of life, answering its cries when its own mother could not.
