Can other animals understand death? - Barbara J. King
In 2018, an orca called
Tahlequah gave birth.
But her daughter died within an hour.
Tahlequah, however, didn’t leave her body.
And over the next 17 days
and 1,600 kilometers,
she kept it afloat atop her own,
diving to retrieve the body
whenever it slipped away,
even after it began deteriorating.
By altering her feeding
and travel patterns,
Tahlequah’s behavior
was certainly unusual.
But was she mourning— or just confused?
Do non-human animals grieve?
This question is tricky.
In 1871, Charles Darwin argued
that other animals
experience a wide range of emotions,
including grief.
But, especially in the absence
of a dependable bridge
between our minds and theirs,
many scientists have long been wary
of projecting human emotions
onto other animals.
It’s also been thought that they might
display irregular behaviors after a death
for other adaptive reasons.
And, for a while, the paradigm was
that humans were exceptional:
other animals were reacting and surviving,
while we alone were thinking and feeling.
This conception was increasingly
challenged during the 20th century.
In 1985, for example,
a gorilla called Koko,
who'd been trained to use some signs
from American Sign Language,
was told that her kitten
companion had died.
She made distress calls,
and several weeks later,
looking at a photo of another kitten
signed “cry,” “sad,” and “frown.”
Now there’s a growing pool
of data and observations
suggesting that some animals,
including mammals and birds,
might experience what we call grief.
In 2003, Eleanor,
an elephant matriarch, collapsed.
Within minutes, another matriarch called
Grace neared and helped Eleanor stand,
only for her to fall again.
Grace vocalized, stayed by Eleanor’s side,
and tried pushing her back up.
When Eleanor died,
a female named Maui approached,
positioned herself over Eleanor’s body,
and rocked back and forth.
Over the course of one week,
elephants from five different families
visited Eleanor’s body.
On separate occasions,
elephants have been observed carrying
the remains of family members,
including jawbones and tusks.
In 2010, a giraffe was born with a
deformed foot and had trouble walking.
The calf lived just four weeks.
On the day the calf died,
22 other females and four juveniles
closely attended and occasionally
nuzzled the body.
On the third morning, the mother
was alone and still not eating,
which giraffes usually do constantly.
Instead, she stayed by her dead calf,
even after hyenas ate away at the body.
Scientists have also begun quantitatively
assessing other animals’
responses to death.
In 2006, researchers analyzed
baboon fecal samples for glucocorticoids,
stress hormones that spike
when humans are bereaved.
They compared the samples from females
who had lost a close relative
in a predator attack
with those who hadn’t.
And they found that the glucocorticoid
levels of baboons who had
were significantly higher the month
following the death.
Those baboons then increased
their grooming behavior
and the number of their grooming partners,
broadening and strengthening
their social networks.
Within two months, their glucocorticoid
levels returned to the baseline.
Researchers have also observed primate
mothers engaging in apparently
contradictory behaviors while carrying
their dead children.
Like switching between cannibalizing
or dragging their child’s corpse
and carefully carrying or grooming it,
suggesting that the mothers were
experiencing conflicting impulses
towards the bodies.
Our current understanding
of the emotional landscapes
of other animals is severely limited.
To get a better grasp on mourning
in the animal kingdom,
we need a lot more research.
But where does this leave us for now?
Conversations around whether non-human
animals experience emotions, like grief,
can be emotional,
in part because their outcomes
have very real implications—
like determining if orcas should be
isolated and kept in captivity,
or whether dairy cows should be separated
from their newborn calves.
Until we do have more data on the subject,
should we treat non-human animals like
they may have the capacity to grieve?
Or assume they don’t?
Which belief could cause more harm?
