There is no doubt that many animals experience rich and
deep emotions. It's not a matter of
if emotions have evolved in animals but
why
they have evolved as they have. We must never forget that our emotions
are the gifts of our ancestors, our animal kin. We have feelings and so
do other animals.
Among the different emotions that animals display clearly and unambiguously is
grief. Many animals display profound
grief
at the loss or absence of a close friend or loved one. Nobel laureate
ethologist Konrad Lorenz writes: "A greylag goose that has lost its
partner shows all the symptoms that [developmental psychologist] John
Bowlby has described in young human children in his famous book
Infant Grief
. . . the eyes sink deep into their sockets, and the individual has an
overall drooping experience, literally letting the head hang . . ." Sea
lion mothers, watching their babies being eaten by killer whales, wail
pitifully, anguishing their loss. Dolphins have been seen struggling to
save a dead infant and mourn afterward. Stories about grief
stricken companion animals abound;
see also).
Wild animals also grieve. Among the best examples are
grieving rituals of elephants in the wild observed by such renowned
researchers as Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Cynthia Moss and
Joyce Poole.
Captive elephants also grieve;
see also.
To quote Joyce Poole: "As I watched Tonie´s vigil over her dead
newborn, I got my first very strong feeling that elephants grieve. I
will never forget the expression on her face, her eyes, her mouth, the
way she carried her ears, her head, and her body.
Every part of her spelled grief". Young elephants who saw their mothers being killed often wake up screaming.
Cynthia
Moss describes the actions of the members of an elephant family above
after a group member had been shot: "Teresia and Trista became frantic
and knelt down and tried to lift her up. They worked their tusks under
her back and under her head. At one point they succeeded in lifting her
into a sitting position but her body flopped back down. Her family tried
everything to rouse her, kicking and tusking her, and Tullulah even
went off and collected a trunkful of grass and tried to stuff it in her
mouth."
Iain Douglas-Hamilton and his colleagues have shown that
elephants extend this compassion to nonrelatives, to those who aren't
genetically related, and at least one anecdote shows them extending it
to humans. A news report told of an elephant in northern Kenya that
trampled a human mother and her child and then stopped to bury them
before disappearing in the bush. Elephants don't show concern just for
their own kin, or their own kind, but rather elephants show a general
concern for the plight of others.
Nonhuman primates also grieve
the loss of others. Gana, a captive gorilla, clearly grieved the loss of
her infant and the image of her carrying her dead baby was shown
around the world. Jane
Goodall observed Flint, a young chimpanzee, withdraw from his group,
stop eating, and die of a broken heart after the death of his mother,
Flo. Here is Goodall's description from her book
Through a Window:
"Never
shall I forget watching as, three days after Flo's death, Flint climbed
slowly into a tall tree near the stream. He walked along one of the
branches, then stopped and stood motionless, staring down at an empty nest.
After about two minutes he turned away and, with the movements of an
old man, climbed down, walked a few steps, then lay, wide eyes staring
ahead. The nest was one which he and Flo had shared a short while before
Flo died. . . . in the presence of his big brother [Figan], [Flint] had
seemed to shake off a little of his depression.
But then he suddenly left the group and raced back to the place where
Flo had died and there sank into ever deeper depression. . . . Flint
became increasingly lethargic, refused food and, with his immune system
thus weakened, fell sick. The last time I saw him alive, he was
hollow-eyed, gaunt and utterly depressed, huddled in the vegetation
close to where Flo had died. . . . the last short journey he made,
pausing to rest every few feet, was to the very place where Flo's body
had lain. There he stayed for several hours, sometimes staring and
staring into the water. He struggled on a little further, then curled
up— and never moved again."
Another story of grieving chimpanzees recently was reported in the Daily Mail.
Gorillas
are known to hold wakes for dead friends, something that some zoos have
formalized in a ceremony when one of their gorillas passes away. Donna
Fernandes, now president of the Buffalo Zoo, tells the story of being at
Boston's Franklin Park Zoo ten years ago during the wake for a female
gorilla, Babs, who had died of cancer. She describes seeing the
gorilla's longtime mate say good-bye: "He was howling and banging his
chest,... and he picked up a piece of her favorite food — celery — and
put it in her hand and tried to get her to wake up. I was weeping, it
was so emotional." Later, the scene at Babs's December funeral was
similarly moving. As reported by local news, gorilla family members "one
by one ... filed into" the room where "Babs's body lay," approaching
their "beloved leader" and "gently sniffing the body."
When
Sylvia, a baboon, lost Sierra, her closest grooming partner and daughter
to a lion, she responded in a way that would be considered very
human-like: she looked to friends for support. Said Anne Engh, a
researcher in he University of Pennsylvania's Department of Biology.
"With Sierra gone, Sylvia experienced what could only really be
described as depression, corresponding with an increase in her
glucocorticoid levels."
Jim and Jamie Dutcher describe
the grief and mourning in a wolf pack after the loss of the low-ranking
omega female wolf, Motaki, to a mountain lion. The pack lost their
spirit and their playfulness. They no longer howled as a group, but
rather they "sang alone in a slow mournful cry." They were depressed —
tails and heads held low and walking softly and slowly — when they came
upon the place where Motaki was killed. They inspected the area and
pinned their ears back and dropped their tails, a gesture that usually
means submission. It took about six weeks for the pack to return to
normal. The Dutchers also tell of a wolf pack in Canada in which one
pack member died and the others wandered about in a figure eight as if
searching for her. They also howled long and mournfully. Foxes also have
been observed performing
funeral rituals.
My friend Betsy Webb who lives in Homer, Alaska, told me a moving story about grief in llamas. She wrote:
"Llamas are gregarious by
nature, extremely perceptive, and forge deep bonds with one another. In
the pasture, our llamas often feed in the same area, sleep
next to each other, and stay close together when they face off an
unfamiliar animal or predator. On the trail, they become extremely
agitated if they lose sight of each other when one stops to rest and
falls behind. They vocalize quite a bit. My favorite is their delicate
greeting call, which sounds like a miniature bagpipe exhaling. When my
family moved from Colorado to Alaska, we brought our two Colorado llamas
with us. As fate would have it, we inherited two Alaska llamas with our
new house and grounds. Each twosome had spent their lives together. At
first, the twosomes were a bit standoffish, but in time, they became
fast friends and a foursome. Several years later, the oldest llama,
Boone, died quite suddenly at twenty-seven years old. One day, he laid
down on his side, too weak to get up. The next day, his life partner,
Bridger, died in the same fashion, next to him. It was early spring and
the ground was still frozen, so we hired a friend with a backhoe to
prepare their grave just across the fence. We carefully hoisted Boone
and Bridger over the fence and into the ground, then covered them. The
other pair, Taffy and Pumpernickel, stood by and watched the entire
process quietly. For the next two days, stoic Taffy stood across the
fence from the grave and stared at the hole in the ground. She barely
moved from the spot. Excitable Pumpernickel stayed in his little barn
and wailed for two days. On the third day, they emerged from their grieving
and resumed their normal activities. Did Bridger surrender himself to
death following the loss of his lifelong buddy Boone? And Taffy and
Pumpernickel, both very distinct personalities, grieved in their own
personal ways. For me, the most moving memory of losing two llamas so close together was experiencing the caring and harmonious llama death and grieving process."
Magpies also grieve the loss of other
magpies;
see also.
I recently received this story via email in response to the essays
about my observations of magpie grief. "I have a farm in Bolton, UK and
we were overrun with Magpies. The reaction from the magpies [to the
corpse of another magpie] in the vicinity was akin to a scene from the
film 'The Birds', as they surrounded the lifeless bird and tried to
reawaken it with their beaks. When they reached the conclusion that it
was indeed dead, there was an outpouring of loud cackling noises which
reached quite a crescendo (there were around 20 of them); this was
echoed by a similar sympathetic chorus from a nearby wood and within a
minute, from all surrounding areas giving the impression that hundreds
of magpies were being told of the death and simultaneously expressing
their grief. It was quite unnerving and I remained within the safe
confines of a barn until all was over."
Why do animals grieve and
why do we see grief in different species of animals? It's been suggested
that grief reactions may allow for the reshuffling of status
relationships or the filling the reproductive vacancy left by the
deceased, or for fostering continuity of the
group.
Some theorize that perhaps mourning strengthens social bonds among the
survivors who band together to pay their last respects. This may enhance
group cohesion at a time when it's likely to be weakened.
Grief
itself is something of a mystery, for there doesn't seem to be any
obvious adaptive value to it in an evolutionary sense. It does not
appear to increase an individual's reproductive success. Whatever its
value is, grief is the price of commitment, that wellspring of both
happiness and sorrow.
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