Do Animals Grieve?

The New York Times ran a fascinating article on Tuesday in the Science Section about an 11-year old mother gorilla in the Munich Zoo, Gana, who refused to surrender the corpse of her dead infant, Claudio, to zookeepers. The baby died of a heart defect and the "grieving" mother cradled and nuzzled her lifeless infant, apparently trying to breathe life back into him.

According to those who study gorillas in the wild, this is a natural instinct. A mother gorilla will often continue to treat the dead offspring as if it is alive, sometimes for days or weeks after its demise.

And while it is tempting to draw similarities between the gorilla's apparent "human-like" emotional reaction to the death of a child, the reaction is rooted in practicality. If indeed the infant is injured or comatose as a result of a fall, there is the chance that it might indeed "wake-up," so carrying it around in case it does is probably less of a display of grief (as we know it) and more of a practical reaction.

I know that many animals react with what appears to be "grief" to the passing of a companion animal. When our beloved Bentley died, Lucy looked for him for days and then six week later, succumbed to a stroke. Coincidence? Perhaps--she was after all 14 and in declining health--but who knows. I gave her "permission" to go find Bentley and that seemed to make her passing easier. At least I think it did.

I do believe that animals who live in the same home do miss each other when they are gone. When one of mine goes to the groomer or vet without the others the ones at home seem a bit lost and frazzled. But I also am not quite sure if animals have the same sense of time that we do. They may know that one member of the pack is missing, but they may not realize they are permanently gone for some time. After all, we reappear and disappear in their lives on a fairly regular basis so it seems quite natural for them to assume the missing one is coming back--even after some time.

Elephants, as some of you may know, seem to me to display the most human-like mourning and grieving behaviors. George Wittemyer of Colorado State University has studied their behavior and described how elephants reacted to the death of one of their prominent matriarchs: "One female stood over the body, rocking back and forth. Others raised their foot over her head. Others touched their tusks to hers. They would do their behaviors and then leave," he told the New York Times.

Were they saying goodbye or urging her to get up and follow them? Or maybe they were just convincing themselves, she was really gone.