It is not easy for scientists to study in depth the behaviors of elephants in nature, but with the help of YouTube revealed that the giant animals also seem to mourn, individually or in groups, the death of their relatives and partners.
The researchers, led by biologist Sanjita Sarma Pokarel of the Center for Ecological Sciences of the Indian Institute of Science and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, published the paper in the British Royal Journal Open Science, according to the Times of New York. and “Science” found 39 videos on YouTube showing 24 cases of mourning behavior by Asian elephants from 2010 to 2021.
Among other things, elephants (possibly parents) appear that smell and touch the face of the dead animalscreaming over the dead, trying with their proboscis and legs to move and animate the body of a dead young elephant, gathered around the lifeless body as if consoling the mother, caressing with their proboscis gently and comfortingly the head of a close relative or friend of the dead animal, who seems to be doing some kind of vigil over the dead and sleeping around him, female elephants (probably mothers) moving the dead elephants with their proboscis carrying the media in the forest for days etc.
THE new study is part of a growing tendency for scientists to use videos uploaded from time to time by various users on YouTube to learn more about animal behaviors that are rarely or never seen at zoos. This concerns, among other things, the field of so-called comparative mortality, ie the way animals react to death. So far there have been mainly anecdotal reports, but not a scientific record, as has now been done in elephants.
Mourning behaviors have been observed in other animals (chimpanzees, giraffes, dolphins, whales, etc.), although it remains under discussion to what extent animals mourn in the human sense, which is nevertheless considered possible. Pocarel said: “As humans, when I see an elephant reacting this way, I think it’s emotionally attached to the dead, but as scientists we have to prove it.”
Scientists do not know, of course, to what extent elephants and other animals perceive the concept of death as something other than the mere absence of a member of the herd. On the other hand, in humans, too, death – primarily – is perceived as absence.
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