Many animals clearly notice death around them, and some bodies head toward the end on their own timetable, but whether any animal senses its own death coming is still an open question.
All research and sources are linked below.
? RESEARCH & SOURCES:
▸ James R. Anderson, Alasdair Gillies and Louise C. Lock — "Pan thanatology" (2010, Current Biology)
doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.02.010 — the filmed death of the old chimpanzee Pansy and what her group did next.
▸ Karen McComb, Lucy Baker and Cynthia Moss — "African elephants show high levels of interest in the skulls and ivory of their own species" (2006, Biology Letters)
doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0400 — elephants, skulls and ivory, with no special interest in their own relatives' bones.
▸ Kaeli N. Swift and John M. Marzluff — "Wild American crows gather around their dead to learn about danger" (2015, Animal Behaviour)
doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.08.021 — why a crow "funeral" works like a danger alert.
▸ Susana Monsó and Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró — "Death is common, so is understanding it: the concept of death in other species" (2021, Synthese)
doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02882-y — the simplest possible idea of death, and why it may be common in nature.
▸ Larry Carbone — "Do 'Prey Species' Hide Their Pain? Implications for Ethical Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" (2020, Journal of Applied Animal Ethics Research)
doi.org/10.1163/25889567-bja10001 — why dogs' pain is read more reliably than that of other animals.
▸ Barbara J. King — "How Animals Grieve" (2013, University of Chicago Press)
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo12233936.html — accounts of grief across species, from cats to elephants.
▸ Z. Yan Wang and Clifton W. Ragsdale — "Multiple optic gland signaling pathways implicated in octopus maternal behaviors and death" (2018, Journal of Experimental Biology)
doi.org/10.1242/jeb.185751 — the gland behind an octopus mother's fast and decline.
▸ Benjamin L. Hart — "Biological basis of the behavior of sick animals" (1988, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews)
doi.org/10.1016/S0149-7634(88)80004-6 — sickness behavior as a strategy that helps fever fight infection.
▸ Jürgen Heinze and Bartosz Walter — "Moribund ants leave their nests to die in social isolation" (2010, Current Biology)
doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.12.031 — dying ants that leave the nest, infected or not.
▸ Jerome Wodinsky — "Hormonal inhibition of feeding and death in Octopus: control by optic gland secretion" (1977, Science)
doi.org/10.1126/science.198.4320.948 — the classic experiment that let octopus mothers live on.
▸ Z. Yan Wang, Melissa R. Pergande, Clifton W. Ragsdale and Stephanie M. Cologna — "Steroid hormones of the octopus self-destruct system" (2022, Current Biology)
doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.043 — the steroid hormones made by the optic gland after mating.
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PEOPLE & PLACES IN THIS VIDEO:
▸ Pansy — An old chimpanzee, more than fifty, whose last hours in December 2008 were filmed in the middle of her group. What her companions did next, from checking her mouth to a night-long vigil by her daughter, is one of science's closest looks at chimpanzees and death.
▸ Blair Drummond Safari Park — A wildlife park in Scotland where Pansy's group lived under the eyes of researchers and cameras. After her death, the platform where she died stayed empty for days.
▸ Amboseli — A national park in southern Kenya, home to the wild elephant families in this episode's experiment. There, elephants sniffed and touched elephant skulls and ivory far longer than wood or other animals' bones.
▸ Seattle — The city in Washington State where wild crows met a masked person holding a dead crow. Some of those crows went on scolding that masked face for weeks.
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IMAGE CREDITS (public domain / CC0):
▸ "Drawing of an Elephant" (c. 1700) — Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0 —
clevelandart.org/art/1969.65▸ "Crow on a Pomegranate" (1500s) — Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0 —
clevelandart.org/art/1974.30▸ "Red-Figure Fish Plate: Octopi, Mullet, Bream, Shellfish", Asteas/Python Workshop (c. 340–330 BCE) — Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0 —
clevelandart.org/art/1985.50————————————————————
? Animation by The Wondering Paw
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#AnimalMinds #AnimalCognition #AnimalBehavior #AnimalScience #Animals #ScienceExplained #AnimatedExplainer #TheWonderingPaw #Thanatology #Chimpanzees #Elephants #Crows #Ants #Octopus #AnimalEmotions
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