Scientists have recorded for the first time the fact that elephants mourn their dead relatives: they grieve like people

When Abu died in 2002, Mafunyane was heartbroken. For several days he kept watch over the body, scaring away the hyenas. Other elephants came to pay their respects to Abu: one, an elderly female named Katie, stood with a liquid like human tears flowing from the eye glands on the sides of her head.

Even now, two decades later, Mafunyane always stops when passing the entrance to Seba’s camp at the safari center, where Abu’s skull is on display. Park rangers have no doubt that the elephants will recognize the remains of their friend and mentor.

The idea that elephants mourn deceased loved ones may seem fanciful, but evidence is mounting that they and other animals, including primates and whales, feel loss just as keenly as humans. And, like us, they use rituals to cope with their grief.

Foresters and tea industry workers in northern India have long argued that elephants bury their relatives in special places.

Now a team from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune has published results that seem to confirm these stories.

The body of a one-year-old calf was found upside down and almost completely buried in an irrigation ditch on a tea estate in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal in 2022.

It could have been the result of an accident, but over the past 18 months, four more baby elephants have been found dead, buried in ditches. All had marks on their skins indicating that after death they had been dragged some distance from the place of their death.

The report’s authors, Parveen Kaswan and Dr Akashdeep Roy, said they believed this indicated deliberate burial, although they stressed that such behavior had not been directly observed.

In Africa, elephants have also been observed covering their dead with branches and leaves, in what is known as “weak burial.”

Veteran wildlife filmmaker James Honeybourne said: “We may never know exactly what goes on in an elephant’s head, but it would be presumptuous to believe that we are the only species capable of feeling loss and grief.”

In 2013, he produced Sir David Attenborough’s Africa, which created a sensation thanks to an episode involving a mother and her starving baby elephant during a drought. Cameraman Mark Deeble followed them for several days. Even after the cub died, the distraught female continued to try to raise him.

At some point she apparently realized that there was nothing more she could do. However, instead of leaving in search of food, which she desperately needed, she simply stood over the body of her cub for a long time.

Elephant bonds can rival in intensity anything known in the human world, and breaking those bonds can be fatal, writes the Daily Mail.

Such a story can be found in the memoirs of conservationist Daphne Sheldrick, who ran a sanctuary in Kenya where orphaned elephant calves are raised and returned to the wild. One day she took under her care a baby elephant who was only a few days old. Daphne devoted herself entirely to the “baby” and spent almost the first six months feeding him gallons of formula.

But she had to leave the cub for a week. Daphne went to her daughter’s wedding. When Daphne returned, she was horrified to discover that the baby elephant had died. As it turned out, he missed her so much that the animal’s heart could not stand it.

“I made the mistake of thinking that someone else could take my place. To prevent them from becoming too attached to any one person, all of the Sheldrick Foundation’s keepers take turns sleeping next to each elephant in the nursery.”

It’s not just elephants that experience these emotions. In 2022, everyone in Sri Lanka was moved to see a gray langur monkey sitting next to a human coffin at a funeral. Taking the dead man’s hand, the animal lifted his hand and dropped it. The monkey then leaned forward and nuzzled his cheek, as if kissing him.

The man’s name was Peethambaram Rajan, a 56-year-old man known for his kindness to animals, and this monkey was his favorite.

Monkeys do react to death in very human ways. A 2021 study by the Royal Society, which looked at more than 400 recorded cases involving 50 primate species, found that female monkeys can mourn their dead babies for several days.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of their “humanity” comes from a gorilla named Coco, who lived in captivity in California with researcher Dr. Francine “Penny” Patterson for over 40 years.

Coco learned American Sign Language, had a vocabulary of over a thousand words, and was able to hold a conversation with Dr. Patterson. In 1985, Coco was given a gray Manx kitten, which she named All Ball. She adored him, constantly hugged her pet and looked after him.

When All Ball died, Coco reacted to the news with horror. She let out a long groan, which is the gorilla equivalent of sobbing. Dr. Patterson later asked Coco if she knew what death meant. The gorilla replied: “Trouble, old… comfortable pit, bye… sleep.”

This clearly means that the idea of ​​physical burial is instinctive and hardwired into the primate brain.