Chimpanzees have also been repeatedly observed engaging in death-related behaviors. In one case , a small group of captive chimpanzees was carefully observed after one of their members, an elderly female named Pansy, died.
They refused to go to the place where Pansy had died for several days afterwards. In another instance, scientists documented a chimpanzee using a tool to clean a corpse. In , a team of primate researchers in Zambia filmed a mother using a piece of dried grass to clean debris from the teeth of her deceased son. The implication, according to the scientists involved , is that chimpanzees continue to feel social bonds, even after death, and feel some sensitivity toward dead bodies.
Magpies have been observed burying their dead under twigs of grass. In one of the most fascinating recent examples, an 8-year-old boy caught video footage of peccaries, a species of wild pig-like animal found in parts of the U. The peccaries visited the dead body repeatedly, nuzzling it and biting at it, as well as sleeping next to it. These stories of dogs who mourn for their owner - is that only wishful thinking?
No, I think that is an absolutely true thing. There was the dog Hachiko in Tokyo in Japan. After his boss died, the dog came to the train with which he normally arrived - for about 10 years.
Whenever you have attachments, be it between a dog and a human or a cat and a human, you can have grieving. They are distressed. With primates like chimpanzees, it is not unusual that if one of the primates in a group dies the others stop eating for a couple of days. They become completely silent, they stare at the body for a long time, they try to revive the body. That is typically human - we don't do that anymore but in the old days people did that.
If it is a very important partner like your best friend or your offspring then it can last much longer, it may last for years. I knew a female who lost an offspring and for months was sort of crying about it. It has a very long-term effect. How do we know that those animals mourn? Maybe they just got out of their routine because something is missing in their life?
I remember a story where a baboon mother lost her baby to a predator. Weeks later she came back to the same area where she had lost her offspring and she climbed into a high tree and started calling. That gives an indication that she remembered what had happened there and that she was missing her offspring.
With primates we often have the impression that they specifically remember the individual. The one thing about death that primates certainly understand is the permanency. That once an individual is dead, they don't move anymore, they're dead. I think they understand that. I'll tell you an anecdote about it. Some bonobos found a very dangerous snake in the forest and were very scared of it, poking it with sticks. At some point, the alpha female, which is dominant over the male, took the snake by the tail, hit it against the ground and killed it.
From that moment on, the young bonobos picked up the snake, hung it around their necks, walked around with and started to play with it.
That indicates that they know that it's a dangerous animal that you should be very careful of - but once it is dead, you can play with it. So I think they understand that death is a permanent condition. Some birds who mate for life sometimes even stop eating and die if their partner dies. This is true for geese but also for many songbirds, they have long-term bonds. I would say elephants, because they go back to the bones of the ones that they have lost.
If an elephant dies - and at the moment with poaching that is a typical occurrence - the other elephants inspect the bones of the dead elephant if they can find them. I'm not sure, though, if anyone has done research on whether the elephants return just to any bones or bones of specific individuals that they have known.
But that would be my guess. They go back to the bones, a bit like us going to a graveyard. No, they don't dig a grave. It is possible that they throw stuff over their dead in order to cover the body. That appears to be like an anti-predator defense, in a sense that a smelling body would attract predators and scavengers.
But I don't know if they do that systematically. Yes, that's for sure. Recently, there was the discovery of Homo naledi , a human ancestor. The team claimed that they buried their dead which is a true indication of humanity. Even though there are a lot of doubts about that claim now, actually. Everything we realize about animals in terms of their emotional lives or death cognition helps - in a sense that it makes the animals more complex or human-like and more attractive to people.
In mammalian species — like ourselves — where sociality is of high importance for survival, you see a strong emotional capacity for responding to death. For Dr Dora Biro of the University of Oxford, who has observed chimps responding to the dead twice, the implications run even deeper than that. There are essentially four components to death that psychologists have identified: Irreversibility, non-functionality the dead do not respond to anything , causality the biological basis of death , and universality: all living things will die, including yourself.
Intelligent animals and humans need time to process it. Little wonder archaeological sites show signs we painted the dead with ochre over , years ago, and cultures worldwide have developed an astounding array of complex rituals, from funerary rites to cemeteries, decorated coffins to pyramids and even the strange rite of the Torajans who will live with the mummified corpse of a family member for weeks. Because at present there is a tremendous solace in understanding that the grief we ourselves feel is shared by all kinds of animals worldwide.
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Can you die from a broken heart? Article continues below. What can be gained from grieving? Do humans and animals grieve in the same way? Many primate species have been observed to carry dead infants for weeks or even months. There is one further reason we should study grief in other animals, says Dr King.
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