I’m sure it depends on the animal and how developed their brain is. A social mammal (whales, elephants, humans and other primates) has brains are highly advanced. How we approach death is likely very different from how a lizard would approach it.
When I lost a cat a few years ago (she died naturally at home), her “brother” ran to the back bedroom and wanted nothing to do with telling her goodbye. He did the same thing the next day when I brought the towel she died on to him to sniff, after I took her to the vet for cremation. And I know he missed her.
And crows have funerals for their departed ones.
When a predator starts devouring a carcass, it looks pretty calm; it doesn’t look concerned to the possibility that the carcass will rouse, like a sleeping animal.
Does this count as an awareness of death? I would say in the broad terms of the OP it does, but in terms of mourning (which is how many have interpreted the question), clearly not.
A murder of crows remembers a murderer of crows for weeks too!!
Very nice link.
Gracias.
One more anecdote along these lines…
Our cats Rocky and Oliver lived together all of Rocky’s life (he was two years younger). Last year, When Oilver was 13, he got sick, I took him to the vet, and it turned out it was his time. I called my wife, she went and got our daughter, and they stopped at home and picked up Rocky before coming down to the vet’s office. Rocky sat next to Oliver as the vet injected the juice.
Rocky changed that day, to be sure. He clearly misses his bud. But he never wandered the house looking for Oliver or anything like that. He knew.
Thinking on this more I wonder if a pet, having never been exposed to death, has anyway to comprehend (on any level) what is going on?
Wild elephants and dolphins and chimps and such will have had regular exposure to members of their group dying be it by age or accident or predation. One would presume having seen it they get a better sense of what this “dead” thing is.
“Understanding the concept of death” involves many things.
If it means, “Are animals capable of grieving over the death of herd members,” the answer is… some seem to mourn their dead. Elephants definitely, even hippos. But many others, like most ruminants, can observe the death of herd members, even offspring, then go nonchalantly back to grazing as if nothing happened. Seriously, antelopes may flee from a leopard, but as soon as the leopard takes one of the fawns down, the others stop and (in effect) shrug “He’s eating Julie. Too bad. Oh well, some grass would hit the spot. Munch, munch.” Even Julie’s mother seems to forget her in seconds.
SOMETIMES mother lions seems to mourn for their dead cubs. On the other hand, if a new alpha male lion kills off the old alpha, he’ll usually kill off the old male’s cubs. And their moms rarely put up a fight. More often, they shrug “Bye Junior,” then eagerly mate with the new alpha.
There’s also the question of understanding one’s own mortality. Even if you grasp that your littermate Fido is gone and is never coming back, do you grasp that you, Spot, are also a being of the same sort as Fido, and that there will thus also come a time when you are gone and never coming back? But absent language, I’m not sure if there is any way to get a handle on whether animals understand that. Heck, even among humans with language, it’s tough enough.
Funny!
Seems to me two concepts involved in understanding death:
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Understanding that alive and dead are two different states: that once something is dead, it cannot become alive again - but, instead, rots if not consumed; that something that is dead ceases to breathe, move, and starts to stink.
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Having and emotional response to the death of some creature the animal could be expected to love (parent, child, sibling, companion).
Number 2 is, as others have pointed out, hard to separate from “having an emotional response to not having a loved creature around any more”. How can we tell that the animal is mourning the death of the other creature, and not simply the loss of companionship? (Not easy to separate these two with people, let alone animals!)
I find it hard to believe that animals would not understand 1, particularly in the wild - they will have observed death many, many times (and if predators, caused it many times - each meal or so).
That being noted, while we of course cannot know what animals are truly “mourning”, it isn’t a huge leap, or I think overly anthropomorphic, to propose that at least some animals are capable of the following line of thought: ‘my beloved companion has ceased to move or breathe and started to stink - that’s what dead things do - dead things can’t come back, they just rot - so my beloved companion is gone for good - and now, I’m sad’.
Donkeys sure seem too. One of poor mini donkeys passed and before we buried him we brought out our other mini tho say goodbye. When he saw his friends body he looked at it for a minute then let out a loud very distraught bray. I swear it damn near brought a tear to my eye. He was then depressed for weeks and only returned to normal after we got another mini donkey.