When animals grieve / Barbara G. King

Accumulating evidence from species as diverse as cats and dolphins shows that humans are not the only ones grieving the loss of loved ones.

John Gonzalo watched a female dolphin from aboard a research vessel in the waters of Amourakikos Bay in Greece. It was clear that the dolphin was in distress. She repeatedly pushed away with her nose and fins a small dolphin that was born, most likely hers, away from the explorers' ship and against the current. It seems as if she wanted to make her baby move - but in vain. The baby dolphin was dead. As he floated under the rays of the scorching sun, his body began to rot; From time to time the mother removed pieces of dead skin and decaying tissue from the corpse.

The dolphin continued to behave like this the next day as well, and Gonzalo and his colleagues on the ship began to worry. In addition to her compulsive occupation of the cub, she also did not eat properly - a behavior that could endanger her health due to the fast metabolism of dolphins. Three other dolphins from the bay's population, which includes about 150 individuals, approached the two but did not disturb or imitate the mother's behavior.

When he watched the event in 2007, Gonzalo, a marine biologist at the Tethys Research Institute in Milan, decided not to collect the body of the newborn and not to perform an autopsy on it after death as he used to do for research purposes. "The thing that made me not intervene was respect," he told me in early 2013. "We had the privilege of witnessing such a clear event of mother-cub bonding in dolphins, the type of dolphin that I have been studying for more than a decade [the most common type, commonly known in Hebrew by the common name "Dolphin" - the editors]. "I was interested in observing the natural behavior and did not want to suddenly intervene and disturb a mother who was clearly in distress. I would define what I saw as grieving.”

Did the mother dolphin really cry for the dead pup? Ten years ago I would have said no. As a biological anthropologist who studies cognition and emotions in animals, I would recognize the strength of the mother's behavior but oppose her interpretation as mourning. Like most animal behaviorists, I have learned to describe such responses in neutral terms such as "a change in behavior in response to the death of the other." After all, the mother may have been disturbed by her pup's strange state of immobility. Tradition dictates that projecting human emotions such as grief onto animals is unscientific tenderness.

But now, especially after two years of research for my book "How animals grieve", I believe that Gonzalo was right when he claimed that the mother dolphin was grieving. In recent years, many observations of animal reactions to death have surfaced, which brought me to a surprising conclusion: marine mammals, great apes, elephants and many other species, from farm animals to pets, are shaped, each according to their personality and living conditions , when a relative or close friend dies. The fact that such a wide variety of species - including those quite distant from the human race - mourn the death of their loved ones suggests that the roots of our ability to grieve are quite deep in evolution.

What is sorrow?

Since the days of Charles Darwin, two hundred years ago, there has been a heated debate among scientists about whether certain animals display emotions, other than those related to parental care or other aspects of survival and reproduction. Darwin thought that since there is an evolutionary connection between the human species and other animals, many emotions should be similar. He attributed to monkeys, for example, sorrow and jealousy, pleasure and anger. But associating such feelings with animals was far from the mainstream scientific mainstream. At the beginning of the 20th century, the behaviorist view began to have a great influence, stubbornly advocating the opinion that only the external behavior of animals - the one that can be observed - and not their internal lives can be studied seriously and carefully. But recently, science has gradually begun to embrace the idea that animals have emotions, thanks in part to anecdotes from long-term field studies of large-brained mammals. In Tanzania, Jane Goodall described in heartbreaking detail the decline and death of the young chimpanzee Flint due to his grief over the death of his mother Flo a few weeks earlier. In Kenya, Cynthia Moss reported that the elephants tend to their dying friends and pick up the bones of their dead relatives. Biologists and anthropologists therefore began to ask questions about the existence and nature of mourning customs among animals.

In order to investigate and understand what grief is in animals, scientists must find a definition for this emotion that will distinguish it from other emotions. Since "an animal's reaction to death" includes any behavior of an individual after the death of a companion, the scientists can suspect that it is grief only if several conditions are met. One, two or more individuals choose to spend time together not only for survival purposes, such as foraging and breeding. The other, when one of the individuals dies, the surviving animal changes its normal behavior routine, a change that manifests itself in reducing the special time for eating or sleeping, in adopting a body position or facial expression that indicate depression or mental turmoil, or in a general decline in development. Darwin linked grief to sadness. But the two differ from each other, mainly in intensity: the grief of an animal grieves more deeply and usually lasts longer.

This two-part definition is not perfect. Scientists do not have a measuring device for "deeper sorrow". Is the measure of grief different from species to species and is the grief of other animals expressed in forms that are difficult for humans to see as mourning? There are not enough data to answer these questions. Moreover, mothers or other caregivers who regularly provide food or care for children who die during their care do not fulfill the first condition (behaviors not aimed at survival only), but they are still prime candidates to suffer grief.

Future studies on animal bereavement will help refine the definition. In the meantime, it advances our critical assessments of the reactions of animals when others in their immediate environment die. For example, baboon and chimpanzee mothers in wild populations in Africa sometimes carry the corpses of their dead babies for days, weeks, and even months—behavior seen as grief. However, they do not show any obvious external signs of distress or mental turmoil. They continue their normal behavior, such as mating, and this does not match the conditions that indicate mourning.

Bieber of the bereaved

A wide variety of species, including elephants, display behavior that fits the two-condition definition of grief. A particularly fascinating example of a grieving elephant came from Ian Douglas-Hamilton of the Save the Elephants organization and his colleagues at the Samburu National Nature Reserve in Kenya. In 2003, they followed the reactions of elephants to the death of Elanor, the senior female in the family. When Eleanor collapsed, a senior female named Grace from another elephant family immediately came to her aid and with the help of Hatia tried to get her on her feet. When Eleanor fell again, Grace stayed with her and supported her body for over an hour even as Grace's family moved on. And then Elanor died. In the race the week after her death, females from five elephant families, including Elanor's, showed a prominent interest in her body. Some elephants looked confused: they pulled and pushed the corpse with their legs and feet or rocked back and forth while standing on it. From the reactions of the females (during this entire period no male elephant came to visit the body) Douglas-Hamilton concluded that the elephants show a general reaction to dying and death: they mourn not only for a relative but also for individuals from other families.

Marine mammals in the wild also exhibit a general grief response. In 2001, during his stay in the Canary Islands, Fabian Ritter from the Institute for the Study of Mammal Encounters observed a female dolphin (Talom Shen) pushing and returning the body of her dead pup in a very similar way to that of the mother dolphin from Amvarakikos Bay. She was not alone. At certain periods of time two accompanying adults swam alongside her, and at other times a group of at least 15 dolphins changed their swimming pace so that they could accompany the mother and her dead baby. The mother's perseverance was remarkable, and on the fifth day, when she began to fade, the attendants joined in and carried the burden on their backs.

Giraffes seem to be grieving too. At the Suisambo Natural Resources Conservation Authority in Kenya, a Rothschild giraffe gave birth in 2010 with a deformed leg. The cub walked less than the other puppies and stayed more still. Zoe Miller, the wildlife biologist at the Rothschild Giraffe Project in Kenya, did not see the youngster's mother move more than 20 meters away from him for the first four weeks of his life. Although individuals in the giraffe herd coordinate their activities, for example looking for food together, the mother deviated from this pattern of behavior and preferred to stay close to the baby. Like the mother dolphin in Amvrakikos Bay, she could have risked her life in doing so - although in this case for a living offspring.

One day Miller discovered that the herd was engaged in very uncharacteristic behavior. 17 females, including the cub's mother, were alert and restless and staring at a group of bushes. The puppy died there half an hour before. That morning, all 17 females showed a deep interest in her body: they approached her and withdrew alternately. By the afternoon hours, 23 females and four young men were involved in the activity, and some were scratching the corpse with their snouts. That evening, 15 mature females gathered around her body - closer than during the day.

The next day, many adult giraffes took care of the baby's body. A few mature males approached for the first time. They were not interested in the body, but were busy looking for food and examining the fertility status of the females. On the third day, Miller located the mother giraffe alone under a tree 50 meters from where the cub died. The body itself was not in its place. After searching, Miller found the body partially submerged under the tree next to which the mother was seen earlier. The next day the body disappeared - hypocrites took it.

Giraffes are very social animals. After the mothers hide their births for the first four weeks of their lives, the mothers sometimes organize themselves according to the nursery method: one looks after the babies, and the rest look for food. Miller does not use the words sorrow or mourning to describe the incident she witnessed. However, much can be learned from this case. Not only did the behavior of the mother change significantly following the death of the fetus, but also the behavior of the other females in the herd. Although other explanations cannot be ruled out, the females' protection of the carcass from predatory teeth indicates with high probability that the reaction involved some degree of grief.

Detailed observations like Miller's of wild animal populations are still relatively rare for several reasons: Scientists cannot be in the right place at the right time to observe the reactions of survivors after the death of one individual. And even if it happened to them to be present, unusual reactions of grief will not necessarily appear. Therefore, any observation, from shelter farms and zoos to private homes, can provide necessary clues, especially at this early stage of research on animal suffering.

I can't even imagine describing the behavior of Willa the Siamese cat without evoking the word "sorrow". For 14 years Willa lived with her sister Carson in the home of Karen and Ron Plow in Virginia. The sister cats cared for each other, slept together in selected places in the house and slept intertwined. When Carson was taken to the vet, Willa was mildly upset until she was reunited with her sister. In 2011, Carson's chronic medical problem worsened. The Plows took her to the vet again, where she died in her sleep. At first Willa behaved like when her sister was taken away for a short period of time. However, within two or three days she began to make strange sounds, sort of whimpering, and to look for the places that were loved by her and Carson. Even when this alarming behavior died down, Willa remained listless for months.

Of all the cases I have collected about the suffering of animals, the most surprising of them all happened at a shelter farm. In 2006, three mallard geese arrived at a refuge farm in Watkins Glen, New York state. They suffered from fatty liver syndrome, a liver disease caused by the forced feeding of geese on farms that market foie gras. Two of the geese, Cole and Harper, were in bad shape both physically and emotionally: Cole had deformed legs, Harper was blind in one eye, and they were very afraid of people. The two forged a supportive and beautiful friendship for four years. Geese are social birds, and yet the strength of their bond was unusual. When the pain in Cole's legs worsened and he was no longer able to walk, he was put to sleep. Harper was allowed to be present at the process and get close to Cole's body. After Harper pushed the body he laid down next to her and rested his head and neck on Cole's neck. He stayed that way for several hours. In fact, Harper never recovered from the loss of Cole. Day after day he rejected other geese that could have been his friends and preferred to sit near a small lake where he used to go with Cole. Two months later Harper also died.

range of grief

It is logical to think that individuals who belong to species that live long lives and tend to share lives very closely with others - mates, family groups or communities - will mourn the death of their loved ones more than other species. But researchers still don't know enough about animal grief to make that claim. This hypothesis should be tested through a systematic comparison of responses to death among a variety of animal social systems, from communities to groups that gather in certain seasons for foraging and mating purposes.

And yet differences in mourning between the sexes will not be the whole story because differences in the social context in all between the various cases and character differences between individual survivors complicate the matter. For example, it seems that the practice of allowing the remaining animal to see the dead body, as was done in the case of Harper and Cole, sometimes prevents or shortens the period of time in which the living animal is in distress because it cannot find its dead friend and it searches for it while expressing its distress by making sounds. However, in other cases this practice does not help at all, which indicates variation in the response to death in individuals of the same species. Also, until now evidence of grief in wild monkeys, living in close-knit social units, is surprisingly limited, while species that usually live alone, such as domestic cats, can form bonds - between relatives or friends - that bring about severe grief reactions than those of social animals More. I predict that field studies will show that some monkey species, living in a wide variety of social forms, grieve to a degree equal to that of some domestic cats. Indeed in my bookHow animals grieve” I bring examples of mourning in cats, dogs, rabbits, horses and birds, in addition to the other animals mentioned here. In every species I find a range of grief: there are individuals who are indifferent to the death of a companion, and some who are very disturbed by the loss.

Cognitive differences also play a role in animal grief. Just as there are different levels of empathy expressed by different species and even individuals of the same species, there must be different levels of perception of a grieving animal. Are there animals that perceive the finality of death or even understand what death is? We just don't know. There is no evidence that non-human animals anticipate death in the way that humans do, an ability on which literature, music, art and theater are based and which costs the human race a great deal in terms of emotional suffering.

Indeed, the ability to mourn can cost any animal both physically and emotionally, especially in nature, where alert behavior is necessary, which requires energy, to search for food, to avoid predators and to mate. So why did the sorrow develop at all? It is possible that social withdrawal that sometimes accompanies the grief of animals allows, if it does not last too long, a time-out for rest and emotional recovery, which can lead to greater success in creating new close relationships. Or as John Archer wrote in his book "The Nature of Sorrow": "Grief can be seen as a price to be paid in exchange for the evolutionary benefit provided by the 'breakup response'". Such a reaction is observed when two individuals with strong ties to each other are forced to separate, and it pushes the lost spouses to look for each other in order to reunite and continue to survive with mutual aid. Grief itself is not necessarily the thing that helps to adjust the evolutions. Instead, it simply testifies to the intense positive emotions experienced before grief, emotions shared by two or more animals that drive them to cooperate in the tasks of feeding and acquiring resources.

the price of love

From this point of view we are allowed to link sorrow with love. That is, grief comes from the loss of love. Mark Bekoff, an ecologist and animal behavior researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who studies emotions in a variety of animals, embraces the idea that many animals feel both "love" and "sorrow," though he admits that it's difficult to define these concepts precisely. We humans, he points out, do not fully understand what love is, but we do not deny its existence or its power to shape our emotional responses.

In his book Animals Matter, Bakoff tells the story of Mam ("Mother"), a coyote that he observed over the course of several years as part of behavioral studies in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. At some point Mam started going on short trips alone away from her band. Her offspring came up when she returned, licked her and rolled vigorously at her feet. Then Mam left permanently. A few wolves from a pack paced; Others set off in the direction she turned to look for her. "For more than a week, the enthusiastic nature of the band seems to have disappeared," writes Bekoff. "Her family just missed her." In the conversation, Ami attributed the family's reaction to love for his mother. He said that in general the potential for love is great in species such as coyotes, wolves and many birds, including geese, because the couples in these species defend the territory, feed and raise their offspring together and miss each other when they are apart.

Love in the animal world is often associated with sorrow when it comes to brave reciprocity. Perhaps even more than the social cohesion within the species, it is the love between individuals that predicts the expression of grief. Is there any doubt that Willa, a member of a species (domestic cats) not famous for its social nature, loved her sister Carson, or that as the remaining sister she suffered grief over the loss?

In our species grief is expressed more and more in rituals rich in symbols. About 100,000 years ago, our ancestors from the Homo sapiens species decorated the bodies of the dead with ocher red. The archaeologists see it as a decorative (more than functional) symbol. 24,000 years ago, a boy and a girl under the age of 13 were buried at the Sangir site in Russia with grave goods, ranging from mammoth teeth to animals carved from ivory. Particularly amazing were the thousands of ivory beads found in the tomb of the two. There may have been stitches for the clothes (which had long since disintegrated) in which the children were buried. It must be assumed that a significant part of this ancient human population cooperated in the preparation of the burial ceremony, since it takes an hour or more to produce each bead alone. Although it is dangerous to project modern emotions onto past populations, the examples of grief in animals reviewed here reinforce the emotion-based explanation of the archaeological findings: our ancestors from thousands of years ago mourned the loss of their children.

In our modern world grief is not only associated with relatives, close friends or close members of the community. The public memorial services at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, at the Genocide Memorial Center in Keighley in Rwanda, at the Memorial to the Murder of European Jews in Berlin, at the Twin Towers site in Manhattan or at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut clearly demonstrate a sense of suffering that stems from global mourning. The unique human ability to feel grief over the death of strangers is based on an evolutionary foundation. Our ways of grieving can be unique, but the ability to grieve deeply is something we share with animals.

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on the notebook

Barbara J. King is a professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary [in Virginia]. Her research in monkeys and apes prompted her to examine emotions and intelligence in a wide variety of animal species.

in brief

Animal behaviorists have always been wary of attributing human emotions, such as grief, to animal responses.

However, a growing body of evidence suggests that a variety of species, from dolphins to geese, mourn the death of their relatives or companions.

From these observations it appears that it is possible that although the ways of grieving of humans are unique, our ability to grieve is deeply rooted in the roots of evolution.

And more on the subject

Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect. Mark Beckoff. Shambhala, 2007.

How Animals Grieve. Barbara J. King. University of Chicago Press, 20013.

The article was published with the permission of Scientific American Israel