Animals, Wakes, and Funerals

A glimpse into the sadder side of animal behavior reveals some heartwarming tendencies.

Recently, there have been an increasing number of studies focusing on the burgeoning subject of animals’ emotions. On the emotional spectrum, animals have been observed to display everything from jovial glee to extreme sadness. Bonobos celebrate (albeit a tad sodomitically) the finding of food, and mourn the loss of their children (heart wrenchingly carrying lifeless infants for days). In my own experiences, I will never forget seeing a squirrel scurry over to what I imagine had been his companion, now dead after being struck by a car. Anecdotal evidence aside, a popular Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sOw3mCz4Oc) shows a similar situation. Although his friend lies dead, a loyal squirrel remains by his side, defending his body from leering crows.

                This behavior reveals a side of the animal world that, until recently, we were too humanly proud to recognize. Complex emotional structures, often attributed only to humans and “higher ranking” animals, have now been recorded on video in organisms as lowly as the common tree squirrel. Similar tendencies have been noted in a litany of other animal species. A brief compendium: geese become visually distressed, with sunken eyes and a drooping posture, after the loss of a partner; sea lions wail in emphatic distress as killer whales prey on their young; dolphins struggle to save infants even after they are long dead; chimpanzees watch in silent reverence as researchers carry off an elder ape to be buried; elephant families try vainly to rouse slain relatives; polar bears paw at the bloody remains of their felled children; the list is exhausting and poignant – these animals feel emotional pain on a level comparable to our own.

                Joyce Poole, as a longtime observer of elephants in Kenya, insists that what she has seen are real emotions. It goes beyond curiosity of why a fellow animal stops moving, and it’s more than a projection of our own emotions. When they come upon a corpse of one of their own, elephants become “highly agitated and investigate them with their trunks and feet”. Even long dead elephants, that remain only skeletally, also capture passing elephants’ attention. When presented with a variety of bones, elephants have been able to pick their relatives out from the bunch. Perhaps as a form of respect or even extended grief, these animals seem to pay respects even to those who have been gone for months or years.

                A lot of this behavior may seem compassionately human. But when we remember that we were not always the highly evolved, intelligent and complex creatures we are today, it makes a lot of sense. As organisms that inhabit earth, we all share a heritage from a long passed, primordial sea. The behavior observed in animals may prove that, while many things in this world our manmade, much of our emotions and mannerisms are purely biological.