Do Animals Mourn Their Dead?
We can't know if or how animals understand death, but behavioral changes in some species could mean they experience something similar to human grief. We're conducting a survey of our viewers!...
==========
Other animals are more like us than you might expect. Some can recognize faces or use tools, and a puppy wagging its tail seems like it’s showing some sort of emotion. Or maybe you’ve seen videos of elephants reacting strangely to dead herd members, almost like they’re mourning. But it’s hard for us to know what they’re really doing, and why. We can’t know if or how animals understand death, but some anthropologists have come up with a basic way to define grief: it’s a change in behavior in living creatures that knew the deceased. And while this is one way to define grief in humans, it’s also a useful guideline for scientists who are trying to understand grief in nonhuman animals. Now, these researchers are looking for behavioral changes ...
==========
Other animals are more like us than you might expect. Some can recognize faces or use tools, and a puppy wagging its tail seems like it’s showing some sort of emotion. Or maybe you’ve seen videos of elephants reacting strangely to dead herd members, almost like they’re mourning. But it’s hard for us to know what they’re really doing, and why. We can’t know if or how animals understand death, but some anthropologists have come up with a basic way to define grief: it’s a change in behavior in living creatures that knew the deceased. And while this is one way to define grief in humans, it’s also a useful guideline for scientists who are trying to understand grief in nonhuman animals. Now, these researchers are looking for behavioral changes ...
