The News
A feature in The Atlantic asks whether animals understand their own mortality. “Comparative thanatology,” the study of how animals experience death, is a small field that dates back to Aristotle, who wrote about dolphins supporting a dead calf. More systematic research is difficult: The animals that “react most interestingly to death,” such as elephants and primates, are long-lived, so data on their deaths is harder to come by. One philosopher argues that some animals achieve a child’s understanding that death involves a permanent loss.
Chimps and other smarter creatures seem to “feel something like grief,” gathering around a dead community member, with those closest to it lingering longest. Still, animals’ conception of death “is mysterious and maybe always will be,” The Atlantic wrote.