There hasn’t been much evidence that nonhuman animals can represent abstract, unobservable constructs.īut just like when we try to assess whether animals possess some sort of language or communication skill, we don’t start by asking whether they can write sonnets. This is part of why many academics may not believe that animals can understand the concept of death, said Jennifer Vonk, a comparative psychologist at Oakland University. Humans have a complex concept of death, weighed down by cultural baggage and myriad emotional responses. To ask whether animals have a concept of death, it first requires defining what a “minimal concept” of death would be-or what are the minimum requirements an animal would need to meet for us to conclude they know what it is. This is where philosophy can provide guidance, according to Monsó. Other animals have similar discrimination skills, which are not a conceptual understanding.
It’s been shown that if you put oleic acid on any object in the nest, other ants will remove it. What the ants are detecting is not the concept of death but a chemical called oleic acid that dead ants produce. Ants perform “necrophoresis,” which is when they remove dead ants from their nests-meaning they can tell which ones are dead and which are alive. Understanding the “concept” of death is different from being able to classify or distinguish the dead from the living. “Nonhuman social animals are not always wholly indifferent to death they have reactions and perform all sorts of behaviors surrounding it, and I think these merits further investigation.” “I hold a semi-agnostic position in relation to other species having a concept of death,” Gonçalves said. As Charles Darwin wondered in The Descent of Man, “Who can say what cows feel, when they surround and stare intently on a dying or dead companion?” Plenty of thanatologists have instead come to the opposite conclusion: that the animals they observe do not have a concept of death. Many agree that great apes and also monkeys show compassionate care for the dying, but whether they have an understanding of death is uncertain. They remained subdued the following day as the night area was cleaned.” From the day area they watched silently as two keepers lowered Pansy from the platform, carried her into the exit corridor, placed her in a body bag, and loaded her into a vehicle that was then driven away. Chimpanzees have been observed in what’s called “stunned silence,” when their usual calling noises stop after the death of a chimp.Īfter the death of the adult female chimp that Anderson observed, he wrote, “The next day, the three surviving chimpanzees were profoundly subdued. (In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the personification of death.) It has focused on cataloging exactly how animals respond to death, and comparing between species, and being open to the idea that these responses aren’t just “automata.”Ī paper from 2019 described how humans removed a dead infant bonnet macaque from its mother, who then regularly visited its burial spot for at least two days. “Are humans uniquely aware of mortality? We propose that chimpanzees’ awareness of death has been underestimated.”įor the past 15 years, the field of comparative thanatology has taken up this investigation in earnest.
“Without death-related symbols or rituals, chimpanzees show several behaviors that recall human responses to the death of a close relative,” wrote professor of psychology James Anderson and his colleagues at Kyoto University. There is nothing more human than being anguished by death-or asking, as Leo Tolstoy did, “Is there any meaning in my life that wouldn’t be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?” Showing that animals can grasp it too-even on a smaller scale-would mean we’re not alone in engaging with our mortality. But grappling with the concept of death is a trait long considered to belong to humans alone. Learning whether animals can grasp such concepts will help us to better understand their minds, and it could have important implications for the ways we treat them.
But there could still be ways to probe whether animals have a concept of death with philosophy's help, by defining what a concept of death is at a bare minimum, and combining observations of animals in the wild with experiments in the lab. When interpreting animal behavior, there's always the risk of anthropomorphism, or projecting human-like emotions and thoughts onto nonhuman animals. Hanging over this research are more philosophical questions: What do these behaviors really mean? Are animals acting in instinctive, hormonal, and unaware ways? Or, when they interact with their dead, do they have some level of understanding of the concept of death? A field called comparative thanatology documents these practices, and compares how different species interact with death and the dying.
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