Death rituals in the animal kingdom We know humans find some form of value in guarding or watching the bodies of the deceased, but in the first article for his new column, Jason Goldman explains how we are beginning to discover that animals may have similar needs. When a Jewish person dies, according to tradition, a member of a group called the chevra kadisha stays with the body from death until burial, continually reciting passages from the book of Psalms. For those in the Catholic church, friends and family members gather together in the presence of the deceased in a ceremony called a wake. Similarly, when ancient Romans died, relatives immediately gathered around the body, reciting lamentations. The body was kept close, in the atrium of the family home, until the funeral procession began. These behaviours transcend cultural boundaries. While the details vary from tradition to tradition, the pattern is undeniable: humans seem to find value in guarding or watching the bodies of the deceased for some period of time following death. But as we are beginning to discover, these behaviours may transcend species boundaries as well. On 10 October 2003, a researcher watched as a female elephant named Eleanor collapsed. Her swollen trunk had been dragging on the ground while her ears and legs displayed evidence of another recent fall. One of her tusks was broken. An elephant named Grace, a member of a different social group, galloped towards Eleanor and tried to heave Eleanor back to her feet with her massive tusks, but Eleanor's back legs were too weak. The rest of the herd had moved on, but Grace remained with Eleanor at least another hour, until the sun disappeared below the horizon and night fell over Kenya. Eleanor died the following morning at 11am. The parade of elephants that followed may – in some deep, fundamental way – be no different from those who gather to pay respects to a dignitary lying in state. Over the course of several days, the carcass was visited by five other elephant groups, including several families that were completely unrelated to Eleanor. The elephants sniffed and poked the body, touching it with their feet and trunks. Even though the carcass had been visited by jackals, hyenas, vultures, and was under the control of lions by the fourth day, the elephants were rarely more than a few hundred metres away during daylight hours. Since interest in the carcass was not just limited to Eleanor's relatives, the observing scientists tentatively concluded that elephants had a "generalised response" to the dead. Supporting evidence for his conclusion comes from other studies, both observational and experimental. While these behaviours are clearly different from human death rituals, they’re still unique as far as elephant behaviour goes.
Reading this article, i knew a lot of useful infornation!!!I am sure that animals are very clever. So they have different traditions as well as people!!! I agree that it is very unusual. But It is really truth!!
