Do Animals Understand Death?

 

Moreover, I saw under the sun that, in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well.  I said to myself, “God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter and for every work.”  I said to myself with regard to humans that God is testing[b] them to show that they are but animals. 

 For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals, for all is vanity. All go to one place, all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.  

Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth?  So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them?

Ecclesiastes 3: 16- 21

One of the recent daily scripture readings was from the enigmatic book of the Older Testament called Ecclesiastes. It was from the same chapter, three, as the well known "for everything there is a season..." passage and I've never noticed it before, particulary the part about humans and animals dying. All creatures die, the writer says. We all share the same breath and then we're gone, so enjoy life while you can. 

As it happened I was reading the book Playing Possum after hearing a thought-provoking  interview with the author, Susana Monso. The title refers to the bizarre ability of the marsupial opossum to fake death by virtually dying with slowing heartrate and excreting noxious fluids. Possums are so near death that they can be poked and cut without reaction. What do they understand about this near-death experience? 

This famous photo of a “chimpanzee funeral” was taken in 2008 by Monica Szczupider, a volunteer at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon. 

In the introduction Monso, a professor of philosophy,  mentions a photo from National Geographic of a group of chimpanzees at a rescue centre in Cameroon watching quietly as a deceased comrade is walked by. Chimps tend to be noisy with relatively short attention spans but here they seem solemn and focussed on the departed. 

She uses the term "comparative thanatology" to describe her exploration of the cross-species understanding of death 

In our hubristic anthropomorphism we may have missed the sense of loss and even mourning expressed by other creatures. Yet if they have been brought into being by a Creator, why do we imagine that they are incapable of experiencing loss?

I've written before about my concern that we are living in a time when lots of people are dispensing with the rituals of grieving often developed by religions. Families often abandon cremated remains at funeral homes or announce that "gathering to be held at a later date" and never do so. I've had people express dismay and regret that their loved one wasn't sufficiently mourned because some family members didn't care to do so. 

Should we mourn other creatures as well? Do they mourn one another? 

 I've said farewell prayers over the graves of a couple of our dearly departed felines and I wept when our beloved Labrador Retriever shuffled off this mortal coil. Perhaps we should take those final breaths more seriously regardless of species.