Mourning in the Animal Kingdom

drunkmonkey

I really didn't know where to put this picture I saw today. It touched me the same as if I had seen a human in the same position.
Do most animals mourn the passing of a loved one?

ppink

I saw that tv show but cant remember which it was but they had a reason for bringing the dead chimp? back for the others to see -which was the mourning I thought.
do you know the programme by any chance?

drunkmonkey

That's the first time I saw the picture, here's a bit more about it http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6444909/Chimpanzees-grief-caught-on-camera-in-Cameroon.html#

slowburner

It's an amazing picture, but science it ain't .

It's perfectly possible that the manner in which the dead chimpanzee has been put in front of the group is the cause of their behaviour.
Who's to say that they are not transfixed by the wheelbarrow?
Maybe it was a particularly squeaky one.
Equally, the behaviour of the group is being interpreted as mourning - when it could just as easily be interpreted as curiosity, or confusion.
This statement by Ms. Szczupider is an example of how the behaviour is being interpreted with prejudiced vagueness:

But they could not take their eyes off Dorothy, and their silence, more than anything, spoke volumes.

If you were to think about it seriously, there would have to be a clear understanding of distinct behaviours associated with mourning.

Then this is said about Dr Marc Bekoff, of the University of Colorado, later in the Telegraph article.

He has previously published observations of a magpie 'funeral' (dead link) where a group of four magpies took it turns (sic) to approach the corpse of a dead bird, before two flew off to return with a piece of grass and lay it down beside the body. He also claims to have seen emotions in elephants

I've often seen this behaviour in Magpies and Hooded Crows - but I certainly wouldn't interpret it as mourning - far from it, both species are aggressive opportunists, halfway between carrion feeders and birds of prey.
Both birds are well capable of killing an injured bird. In fact the effectiveness of the Larsen trap relies on this behaviour.
I would interpret the behaviour I have observed, as aggression.
Dr. Bekoff interprets it as mourning (or rather that is how the Telegraph represents his observations).

I'm not saying that the animal kingdom is incapable of feeling sadness at the death of one of their kind, I am just saying that this kind of subjective anthropomorphism has no value, and when the observations are presented as pseudo-science it detracts from the possibility of genuine enquiry.

ppink

How does one scientifically measure if an animal is in mourning? is it possible?

drunkmonkey

They have to mourn I woudn't believe the cant feel every emotion we do, pretty tragic.thread in AH right now but again its shows how close we are.

slowburner

ppink wrote: »

How does one scientifically measure if an animal is in mourning? is it possible?

That's the problem: so it's an area that's open to all sorts of conjecture and projecting our emotions onto other animals.

slowburner

drunkmonkey wrote: »

They have to mourn I woudn't believe the cant feel every emotion we do, pretty tragic.thread in AH right now but again its shows how close we are.

Maybe they do, maybe they don't.
It's easy to imagine that as animals become more closely related to us, that they will feel emotion more like us too.
I've no direct experience of chimpanzees, but I've a fair bit of experience with dogs. One thing I've seen, on a number of occasions, is that if one member of a unit dies, the other couldn't care less - sometimes they even appear happier.
But then, maybe I'm guilty of interpreting their emotions.
Who's to say how any animal demonstrates its emotion?
We accept that a dog is happy when it wags its tail, or that a cat is content when it purrs, but can we list the signs of other emotions, in other animals?

SuperInfinity

Nowadays it's pretty well accepted that many animals mourn their dead. The old guard that criticized "interpretative" science may have had a point, however a lot of them went way too far to the point of denial of any sentience or concept of love or emotion at all in non-human animals. I find this disgusting, and almost like the Nazi mentality about how they would treat black people and jews as inferior, unfeeling entities.

For a domestic example horses are said to grieve a lot for their dead. I'm sure the dogs that "seemed happy" didn't really like the other dog in the first place.

slowburner

That's the problem with interpretation.
I say the dog seemed happier, you say the dog didn't like the other dog in the first place.
We end up in a circular sparring match and no one's any the wiser.
It's an area of science fraught with pitfalls; especially where the motivation of the investigator seems to drive the methodology

This abstract sums it up reasonably well.

Many questions about animal welfare involve the affective states of animals (pain, fear, distress) and people look to science to clarify these issues as a basis for practices, policies and standards. However, the science of the mid twentieth century tended to be silent on matters of animal affect for both philosophical and methodological reasons. Philosophically, under the influence of Positivism many scientists considered that the affective states of animals fall outside the scope of science. Certain methodological features of the research also favoured explanations that did not involve affect. The features included the tendency to rely on abstract, quantitative measures rather than description, to use controlled experiments more than naturalistic observation, and to focus on measures of central tendency (means, medians) rather than individual differences. Much animal welfare science has dropped the philosophical stance but retained most of the methodological features. Thus, animal welfare scientists attempt to understand affect through quantitative measures, often in controlled experiments, with relatively little focus on individual differences. An alternative paradigm, seen in the work of Jane Goodall, Barbara Smuts and others, made a fundamental departure from these methodological features. These scientists collected qualitative, narrative data as well as quantitative; they described complex behaviour rather than measuring selected abstract features; and they attempted to understand the unique features of individual animals rather than averages for a species or type. Data produced by this alternative paradigm almost require scientists to involve affect in order to achieve plausible explanations of behaviour. Suitably developed, the alternative paradigm may provide a useful tool for fundamental studies relevant to animal affect and animal welfare.

http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/applan/article/S0168-1591(09)00038-0/abstract