Grief is a well-known emotion that we all hope to avoid. We most commonly associate it with with death and loss. Grief is defined as a deep sadness especially caused by someone’s death. We can say that humans generally react in this way to the death of someone known to them. I have experienced death in my family as well as death to a pet. An interesting situation arose with the death of one of my cats. My family of course was distraught over his passing away and we all went through our grieving processes. But with only one of our two cats dying, we were worried about how our second would react. Would she grieve with us? Instead of grieving she actually became much happier. It turned out she enjoyed being “an only child”, as it were. It made me wonder if animals could really grieve at all. Can animals understand death and feel the pain of loss? Or do they take no notice at all?

Many of these questions are actually discusses in Katherine Foley’s article on human grief. The first study she discusses is one conducted by Barbara King asking if animals grieve the same as humans do. King found many different animals of all sizes, from elephants to ducks, that had similar brains to one another. She then conducted an observational study which determined that each type of animal reacted to loss in a very similar way to humans. They were “withdrawn, less interested in socializing, restless or unable to eat or sleep”. They showed signs all the signs of grief that humans typically show. Her reasoning behind grief is that an “adjustment period” is necessary. Animals learn certain routines based around other beings, just as humans do. Once they are lost, they have to relearn habits and feel the absence of their loved one which is grief. While I do not find an observational study to be as affective as an experiment, it would not be ethical to test the affects of loss, or death of a loved one, on animals. There for, in this case, it is an effective method. 

However, in his paper, Richard Bryne takes another approach that can be experimented upon. He discusses whether elephants, specifically, can feel emotions resembling grief. He suggests that elephants showing interest in other elephant carcasses could be evidence that they do. Elephants are known to show interest in dead elephant bodies. Could this be because they understand the pain of loss and feel grief? Or would any other body or object provoke their interest? National Geographic conducted a study to find out. Nineteen groups of elephants were shown different objects and tested to see which they found most interesting. One group was shown elephant skulls and other objects like wood and ivory. Another group was shown elephant skulls opposed to skulls of other species of similar size. One group of only elephants who had lost their matriarch recently were shown the skull of their matriarch as well as skulls of a few other unknown matriarchs. All objects were placed the same distance from each other and from the elephants. Two out of three described groups showed evidence that elephants preferred investigating elephant bones over anything else. The first group spent six times longer on average investigating the elephant skulls rather than ivory or wood. The second group spent twice as long examining elephant skulls rather than skulls of rhinos or buffalo. The third group was shown only elephant skulls. While they investigated the skulls, the elephants could not tell their own matriarch apart.

The suggested reason for this result is that elephants form strong social bonds, similar to the ones humans make. While they may not be able to tell the bones of their relatives apart, they are looking for their lost ones. Unfortunately this is still not evidence that elephants feel grief. While it is in support of the alternative hypotheses- elephants can grieve- it does not prove it. Animals’ minds remain too much of a mystery for us to know for sure. I do not know in which direction science should go to find out more but I believe it is very possible that it will  be discovered that animals can grieve as humans do.