Many animals have been proven to express some form of grief. From Tanzania, Jane Goodall once recorded a young chimpanzee that died of grief following the death of his mother only weeks earlier. One study followed a beluga whale that carried her deceased calf for almost a full week, while another found lemurs giving “lost” calls in the presence of a killed family member. Out of all these, however, perhaps elephants resemble a human’s mourning patterns most closely.
Elephants are often considered one of the world’s smartest animals, so it naturally follows that they also experience such complex emotions and sensations as grief. They have been documented stroking the bones of the deceased, guarding carcasses, burying dead calves, and even crying. Though ignoring the remains or bones of other species, elephants almost always react to those of their own.
One poignant example of this is the death of Eleanor, the matriarch of a Kenyan elephant family called the First Ladies. Researchers noted that she was bruised, dragging her trunk along the ground, and, soon after, she collapsed. Grace, a matriarch from another family, then approached Eleanor, attempting to nudge her back on her feet. Eleanor once again thudded to the ground, and Grace became incredibly agitated, vocalizing, pushing, and refusing to leave her.
When Eleanor died the next day, another female named Maui attended to the body, rocking over and prodding at it. For a whole week, elephants from five different families visited Eleanor’s corpse.
Another account details how a researcher once hid a speaker in a thicket. The device played a recording of an elephant who had recently passed, which caused its family members to call out in distress. In vain, they attempted to search for the dead elephant, and its daughter called for days afterward. The experiment was never repeated by the researcher again.
Though they can also be indicative of curiosity or confusion, these behaviors most closely align with the emotional distress of grieving. Mourning, of course, manifests differently in elephants and other animals than they do in humans, but it’s clear that, in grief, we are more similar than we are different.
When compared to other animals, elephants seem the most attuned to grieving the dead and expressing emotional distress.
There have been countless studies documenting their mourning behavior, such as crying, attending to the bones of the deceased, and burying young calves.
Sources: Humans Are Not the Only Creatures Who Mourn; Asian elephants mourn, bury their dead calves: Study; Elephants in Mourning Spotted on YouTube by Scientists; The Depths of Animal Grief; When Animals Mourn: Seeing That Grief Is Not Uniquely Human
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