Tahlequah is an endangered orca that calls the calm, nutrient-rich waters of the Pacific Northwest its home. In 2018, the 26-year-old cetacean made headlines around the world as a symbol of animal grief after she was recorded carrying her dead newborn Alki on her nose.
She will continue to do this for just over three weeks.
Cetaceans such as killer whales are socially complex and cognitively advanced animals. They teach their young to hunt and have different cultures and dialects. Like Tahlequah, mammals may even mourn the loss of family members—at least that's how their behavior appears to us humans.
David Stallman is a professor of psychology at the University of Mary Washington, specializing in animal behavior and comparative cognition. He says that while some species exhibit behaviors that appear ritualistic, such as performing funerals, few exhibit characteristic behaviors, that is, consistent, observable actions.
“I think we would be doing science a disservice if we called this behavior 'funeral conduct.' I rather think that what we call funerals in humans may be largely an extension of the typical behavior of particularly social but nonverbal animals,” says Stallman.
“In social creatures, an individual's well-being necessarily depends on other members of the group. In such cases, the individual's behavior will often be a function of the other individual's behavior—one word we use for such a case is 'helping' behavior,” Stallman adds.
Read more: Animals react to death in different ways. Mourning may be one of them.
How animals react to death
Species that develop complex social behavior will also evolve. complex behavior related to death, he adds. This occurs because the deceased person no longer responds to group dynamics or participates in other social functions that benefit his fellows. Once upon a time, an individual animal could have come into contact with a now-dead animal, but it does not, changing its behavior.
Elephants visit their dead
ElephantsFor example, they present a “surprising case” that is studied perhaps more often than any other species in comparative thanatology, or the study of how different species respond to death and dying.
“The most common behaviors you see in them are approaching and being ‘curious’ about the dead, including revisiting the corpse, and increasing prosocial behavior towards other living relatives,” Stallman says..
Wild elephants in Africa and Asia are known to visit the carcasses of their dead calves and care for dying matriarchs, each of which shows the giant mammals have a general understanding of and curiosity about death, according to a study conducted in Applied Animal Behavior Science. As Stallman describes, animals are known to touch, approach, and examine the corpses of their dead, revisiting them in all stages of decomposition.
In 2024, researchers writing in Journal of Endangered Taxa It has been documented that elephants in northern India carried dead calves by their trunks and legs to a specific location where they were buried face up. Different herds exhibited different behaviors, but they could usually be observed trumpeting around buried calves.
Cetaceans carry their dead
Cetaceans such as dolphins and whales form deep emotional bonds with their families, and their behavior after the death of their calves also indicates that they are mourning their loss. Dolphins and whales have been spotted carrying their dead babies for hours or even days.
Tahlequah was seen again in December 2024 with another dead calf. Marine biologists call this behavior “epimeletic”: a long period of maternal care that demonstrates love, loss and sadness – just like in humans – in other animals.
Chimpanzees have a moment of silence
More than a dozen chimpanzees at a rescue center in Cameroon gathered after the death of their matriarch Dorothy in 2008. They gathered in abnormal silence, touching each other and showing signs of grief.
Although researchers like Stahlman are cautious about explaining human behavior, such events involve complex emotional processing, according to the International Institute of Cognition and Culture.
Other instances of non-human primates mourning their dead include “carrying the corpse for long periods of time (primarily mothers carrying dead babies) and inspecting the corpse for signs of life,” a team of researchers wrote in a 2019 study in the journal Primates.
Corvid crows in the sky
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that corvids such as magpies, crows and rooks continue to interact with their fallen comrades.
One study in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B claims that crows sometimes get along with their dead brethren, while another study in the same journal claims that magpies gather around the deceased for up to 15 minutes, cawing loudly.
Rats bury their dead
Rats, known for their intelligence and highly social behavior, also seem to mourn the loss of their cage mats. Scientists in a 1981 study Physiology and behavior found that rats buried the bodies of their dead companions that had been dead for a long period of time—about 40 hours—but not those that had been dead for less than five years.
However, rather than indicating a deep connection between individuals, such behavior may instead reflect attempts to remove a decaying individual who may pose a health risk to the living group.
Ants use burial mounds or prepare food from the dead
Likewise, ants They bury their dead in compact mounds that resemble insect cemeteries. Taking on the role of mortician again does not reflect deep connection or emotional intelligence; rather, it is a means of protecting the colony.
Living ants can also eat their dead ants, taking advantage of the remaining nutrients.
Do animals really grieve, or are we simply projecting our own emotions?
People talk to their dead at funerals and keep memories of them through gravestones or photographs. Some might even put out offerings of food or drink.
“When our emotions run high or our circumstances seem dire, we demand answers from them. All of this represents behavior we call 'missing' them, in the sense that they were the target for some of our actions, and now the repertoire we've created is now 'missing the mark' because they can no longer respond to us,” says Stallman.
“Grief is associated with a part of ourselves, a part of our own behavior, that is no longer functioning because someone has died. There is no reason to think that this does not happen in social animal species as well,” Stallman adds.
In other words, burying animals may be less about intellect and more about practicality. Again, who are we to say what other species feel?
Read more: After death, the necrobiome helps control the circle of life
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