Why some animals appear to mourn their dead

Why some animals appear to mourn their dead Alamy Grief has long thought to be a human trait, but other animals – from killer whales to crows – also appear to suffer loss when a companion dies. In 1999, an elderly female elephant at an Indian zoo reportedly died of grief after a young elephant she had befriended died during childbirth Sometimes this behaviour can continue long after the death. In another study, it was found that female baboons who had lost a close relative had increased levels of stress hormones, a response that is Whether these behaviours truly count as grief depends largely on how you define the concept of grief Some animals even appear to display ritualistic behaviours after a death, similarly to how humans would hold a funeral. Another important element of grief is that it Grief "Even if you explicitly know that someone has died, there might be another sense in which the loss hasn't yet been integrated into your world and into your habitual patterns of behaviour and thought," says Millar. "I think that other animals can share their lives with one another in quite a rich way and their whole patterns of behaviour can come to hinge upon that other animal," says Millar.