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Do animals mourn their dead.
#1
The article is interesting and the author does examine the question of animals mourning their dead.


Read it and tell me what you think.

http://news.google.ca/news/url?sr=1&ct2=...t=2&at=dt0

I would be more definite in saying yes they mourn.  Animals certainly know what death is. It is too easy to give other explanations for mourning behavior. If it looks like mourning and acts like mourning just maybe it is mourning.
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Catherine

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#2
I can say right now that I know they do. Misty grieved to a certain extent when our very good friend Peter passed away in 2011, whom she was very fond of. When I went to clean out his flat, she was very strange and subdued. She knew he had gone and wasn't coming back.
She was fine so long as I distracted her and never mentioned his name to her. I kept the cap he always wore, and one day when I was cleaning, it fell to the floor and Misty sniffed at it. From being quite light-hearted, she suddenly seemed sad.

Our dog friend, Jet mourned Misty very deeply indeed. I went to see him every day to support him and bring him some normality, and never grieved in his presence for his sake. But it took him 3-4 weeks to recover even slightly. When he recovered he came through the fields to visit me. He lay in his usual place on the door-mat. But when I opened the door, and he caught Misty's scent from the mat inside (she used to like to lie there) -he looked very upset, and ran away home.
And he was never the same again after that.
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#3
Oh, that's sad, Tobi! It almost brought a tear to my eye.

As for the general notion of animals grieving, let's not forget the "elephant whisperer", Lawrence Anthony. Wayward elephants travelled about twelve hours to reach his home after his passing, and stayed there for two days and mourned his passing. See http://delightmakers.com/news/wild-eleph...-whisperer

There is also an excellent video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHhE6N3XK7w

About animal grief generally, their is a sympathetic article by a vet here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/pets/animals-...people-do/
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#4
I had forgotten about the elephant whisperer.  It is not just that they mourned, it is remarkable that they knew that he had died.
We know much less about animals than we think we know.

I have seen hamsters grieve. I have seen them simply stop living because they lost a mate. I can understand why Jet was so deeply affected by Misty's death. They had a close bond. Knowing she was dead and smelling her "presence" would have been too much for him.

I even observed Goldfish and Koi grieving. I lost my entire tank of fish to a parasite and it took about two weeks for all of them to die. Some of those fish had been together as hatchlings. Darcy swam around Sylvia as she was dying and when she was gone he  just gave up and died too.  The Koi were even more upset. They watched a friend die and then they huddled together almost doing a fish hug.  I sat beside the tank and fish would lie on the bottom near me as they were dying. All of us mourned together and tried to comfort each other and be as close as possible.

People who deny animal feelings are not very observant and possibly not too aware of their own feelings. We don't always know what an animal is feeling. Some people are much better at understanding animals. Still if you see the basic signs of an emotion, probably that is what that animal is feeling.

Even my reptiles grieve. They all missed Tarragon when she died. I think the pink tongued skink still misses her. He has never been the same.  The three baby beardies that I raised together spent their entire lives together. When one died the other two died within the month. They were very close.

I always let the others see their dead friend. Then they know. Once when a male hamster got out and got killed I didn't show his body to his mate. She grieved terribly and searched for months. She had a way of looking at me and I am sure she was asking "have you found him yet". If I had showed her the body she would have known he was dead and accepted it. I never made that mistake again. I even showed Louis the Pine snake to Ella his mate. She looked him over and rested her head over his for a little while and then went back into her den. Before that she had been restlessly searching.
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Catherine

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#5
Lawrence Anthony is such an amazing Soul. Thank you LPC for reminding us of what happened after his passing, when the Elephants all gathered at his house. Not only does that show their love and respect for him, and their mourning, but also shows they were capable of 'picking up' the knowledge that he had gone. It's my theory that he visited them as he left his body, and they sensed him.

That is a very moving article and video. Blessings to you, Lawrence Anthony!
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#6
The elephants certainly knew somehow. They reacted as if the heard the news as soon as he died. Animals don't just mourn and grieve. They also show respect for the dead. The elephants certainly did. That is complex emotional behavior. I think we need to re-evaluate our understanding of animal emotions and responses.

We need to start learning from observation and not preconceived ideas.
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Catherine

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#7
(09-25-2016, 04:44 PM)Catherine Wrote: I think we need to re-evaluate our understanding of animal emotions and responses.

We need to start learning from observation and not preconceived ideas.

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#8
The more I get to know animals the more I realize how complex they are. I bred dwarf hamsters for 11 years. After the first year I thought I knew everything about dwarfies. After the second year I realized that I had just scratched the surface. They were far more complex emotionally than I ever imagined. I base that on my own observations.

Who knows what we would learn about animals if we put our preconceived ideas aside and seriously studied them. We would know more about humans if we did the same observations of people.
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Catherine

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