WEBVTT - Do Animals Understand Death? 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:04.000 Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. My 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:05.920 name is Hoorge Jam and to me. On the program, 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:09.280 we are answering the question do animals, like your pet 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:13.640 or animals in the wild understand death. We're gonna be 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.799 talking to a psychologist who's been studying chimpanzees for over 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:19.759 forty years, and we're gonna hear from a philosopher of 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:23.119 animal minds got obsessed with this topic as a way 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:27.440 to deal with their own mortality. So do dogs dwell 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:31.000 on their own demise or do possums ponder their pastor? 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.360 Let's find out as we answer the question do animals 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:36.840 understand death? 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:41.120 Hey? 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:43.600 Everyone, I thought I'd start the episode with one of 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:47.400 the most fascinating interviews I've done for this show. It's 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:51.239 with a psychologist named James Anderson. Doctor Anderson is now 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:54.880 a professor emeritus at Kyoto University, and he has spent 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.840 the last forty years studying chimpanzees and monkeys and their 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:03.120 behavior they eat, sleep, and work together. But then in 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.959 two thousand and eight, something incredible happened. His team of 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:11.000 researchers recorded, for the first time ever on video, the 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:15.440 passing away of an adult chimpanzee surrounded by her close group. 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:18.920 One of his students, Louise Locke, was studying a group 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.000 of chimpanzees at the Blair Drummon Safari Park in the 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:24.600 middle of Scotland, and she was just there to study 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:28.480 their sleep patterns, but almost by accident, they happened to 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:33.120 record the moment of death of a chimpanzee named Pansy. 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:35.600 Here's how doctor Anderson describes it. 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:40.600 One member of the chimpanzee group was at the time 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:46.039 the oldest chimpanzee in the UK. She was around sixty 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:50.040 years of age. She had been a circus chimpanzee in 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:55.240 her early life, but she was now suffering from age 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:59.720 relate to diseases. And then one day the keeper of 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:05.440 the chimpanzees noticed that she was breathing very heavily and 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:08.040 she thought she's not going to last very long. 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:13.080 So the oldest chimpanzee in the UK, Pansy looked like 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:16.480 she was about to pass away. At this point, this 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:19.480 very part caretaker had to make a choice about what 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.000 to do, and he decided to let nature take its 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:26.960 course and let her pass away. Surrounded by her closed group. 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:29.919 He let her be, but he left the video camera 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:33.600 running all night. When the researchers reviewed the video the 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:39.080 next day, they were shocked. Can you describe what you 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:40.160 saw in that video? 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:44.640 Yes? Well, what was clear is that by the time 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:49.840 the video started, the old female chimpanzee, she was lying 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:54.840 up on a platform. Occasionally the chimpanzees would come over 0:02:55.400 --> 0:03:00.600 and groom the old female. But then three of the 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:05.560 chimpanzees and the group came over and gathered around her 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.400 at once, and this was the first time this was happening, 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:14.280 and two of them were grooming her, her daughter and 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:19.600 her long term friend, another adult female, and then the 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:24.480 adult male in the group came over and he bent 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:29.680 down and looked closely into her face, and then he 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:34.320 took her by the shoulder and gradually shoot her shoulder 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:39.680 while staring at close range into her face. And then 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:43.640 he laid her shoulder back down on the ground, looked 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:45.640 at her, and then moved away. 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:50.240 As Pansy laid there dying, her daughter and her best 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.600 friend gathered around her and seemed to be comforting her, 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:56.880 holding her hand and grooming her. The adult male of 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.400 the group came and shook her as if he was 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.920 trying to shake her back to life. 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:08.000 A few moments later, Rosie, her daughter, and then her 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:13.880 lifelong friend remained holding her hand, and that was most 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:19.480 of the contacts over the next several hours. Not long 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.240 after that period, the female was dead by then, and 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:27.039 what we had witnessed was the precise moment where the 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:32.560 adult male seemed to be checking for any signs of 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:37.719 life and perhaps realizing that she had gone, when the 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.719 other two members of the group were giving the final 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:47.440 moments of comfort to the adult female. Her daughter slept 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:51.520 beside her all night long, and then the following morning 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:55.400 her long term friend came over and sat by her, 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:59.280 and because of that responses by the male, he had 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:03.960 left some straw on her, so she gently cleaned the 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.560 straw of her body and her face and just sat 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:08.760 by her for a while. 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:13.320 Wow. Now what amazed doctor Anderson was how close this 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:17.920 behavior was what you might observe in humans. Pessy's family 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:20.960 seemed to have gathered to accompany her and to be 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.520 close to her in her final moments. When doctor Anderson 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:27.440 and his team wrote a paper describing this video, they 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:30.680 wrote about how this seemed very similar to what humans 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:32.400 would do. Here was his reaction. 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:37.479 That's what I described in the paper some of the 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:43.400 responses that have been described in human societies when they're 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:47.960 dealing with the final moments of our whose relative we 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:55.120 see time and time again. This gentle contacts quietness, caressing 0:05:55.360 --> 0:06:01.640 the corpse sometimes in some individuals, and outburst of anger 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:09.040 directed towards the crops, especially by close relatives who really 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:14.159 feel anger at being left. Attempts to check for signs 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.440 of life. You know, now we humans, we've got more 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:21.200 medical ways of doing it, checking for pulse. But you know, 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:27.640 the chimpanzee was doing what he knows. We concluded by saying, well, 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:32.880 at least some aspects of the response to the peaceful 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:38.720 death within our group may have parallels between chimpanzees and 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:42.960 our own species. And I've got some interesting reactions. 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.120 When doctor Anderson published the paper describing this video, along 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:50.960 with his PhD student and the Safari Parks caretaker, caused 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:55.360 a media frenzy is university. At the time, the University 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:59.440 of Stirling was inundated with phone calls and emails. They 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:02.599 were invited to be on TV, radio magazines in the 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.479 UK and across the world, and it helped give a 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:10.600 spark to the general conversation about whether animals understand death now. 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.480 Part of the excitement here is that these observations of 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:17.120 animals at moments of death are rare. One of the 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.800 closest examples on record that doctor Anderson could find had 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:25.520 happened thirty years before in the Gombe National Park in Tanzania. 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:31.600 An accidental death reported in wild chimpanzees when an adult 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.840 male fell out of a tree and died instantly on 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:39.400 hitting the ground. And then the response of the other 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:44.240 chimpanzees couldn't have been more different. The group members erupted 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:50.960 into a frenzy of excitement and alarm, embracing each other, screaming, 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:55.840 running towards the body, staring at it but never coming 0:07:55.880 --> 0:08:01.520 into contact with a disbelief at first, are running around 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:06.720 in almost panic. There was also lots of mutual embracing, 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.400 as if trying to reassure other individuals. 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:13.280 You know, my reaction when you just told that story 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:16.560 was that that also seems very human in how we 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.040 would react if we suddenly saw traumatic death. 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:20.440 Yes. Almost. 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:24.440 This paper also helped push forward a new field of 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:29.720 science called comparative thanatology. The word panatology means the study 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:33.240 of dying and it comes from Thanatos, the Greek god 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:36.240 of death, and yes, it's also what inspired the name 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:39.560 of the supervillain Thanus in the Marvel movies. Now, the 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:44.760 word comparative in comparative panatology means you're studying dying in 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:48.520 different species of animals, not just humans and apes, to 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:50.920 find out what they have in common and what that 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:54.440 tells us about evolution and whether humans are unique or 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:57.800 not in how we relate to our own mortality. Next, 0:08:57.840 --> 0:08:59.880 we're going to talk to someone who's written a book 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:04.400 about comparative panatology and how animals understand death. And she's 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:08.040 looked at species ranging from ants to possums, to elephants 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:10.640 to wales, and when we come back, she can tell 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:14.000 us how all of these animals experience their own expiration. 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:26.000 Stay with us, you're listening to science stuff. Hey, welcome back. 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.320 We just talked about how chimpanzees are closest relatives react 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:33.439 to one of their own passing away. The question now 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:37.280 is how do other animals react to death? Are their 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:40.760 signs that they understand what it is. To answer this question, 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.439 I talk to someone who is a philosopher of animal minds. 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.400 Doctor Susanamonceau is a professor at the National University of 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:51.600 Distance Education in Spain, and she's written a book called 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:56.080 Playing Possum, How Animals Understand Death. I asked doctor Monse 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:58.040 what got her interested in this question. 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.280 I had done my PhD. Whether animals could behave morally, 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:06.360 whether they have emotions like empathy, and so I've always 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:10.240 been interested in questions that have to do with those 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:13.280 capacities that we tend to think of as uniquely human. 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:19.600 There was an emergence of field biologists documenting animals reacting 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:23.720 in interesting ways to dead individuals. At the same time, 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:26.720 there's also kind of a personal sight to the story. 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:31.880 I was about to turn thirty, and I think I 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:35.079 became obsessed with death. A lot of people have this 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:40.640 period of existential angst. My grandmother had just died, and 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.880 I think turning thirty also was symbolic in that really 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.840 a moment where you're definitely an adult. You can no 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:51.600 longer pretend like you're just a youngster. Yeah, I was 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:52.400 really afraid of it. 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:55.959 I asked doctor Mansa to tell us of different examples 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:59.720 from her book of animals reacting to another animal passing away, 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:01.559 starting with elephants. 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:05.560 So elephants is a typical animal that everyone thinks of. 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.800 Because elephants are like the animal that has some special 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:12.280 relationship with death, people think of elephant graveyards, which apparently 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:14.600 are a myth. They don't really seem to go any 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:16.080 specific place to die. 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:21.160 That's right. Elephant graveyards, meaning a special place where elephants 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.079 go when they're ready to die, are not really supported 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:27.720 by scientific evidence. It's probably more of a myth. However, 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.920 elephants do seem to act in a special way when 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:34.000 other elephants pass away, but. 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:38.840 They do seem to be very interested in death, and 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:43.400 specifically in the deaths of fellow elephants, and they will 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:47.880 visit the corpses of elephants that have died, even if 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:52.120 they're not related. They visit these corpses and they touch them, 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.839 they sniff them, they are very interested in them, which 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:59.320 doesn't happen with corpses of other animals. There's like a 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:03.880 parade of different elephant families that come to it and 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.199 interact with the corpse in some way, and some of 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:11.679 the interactions are tactile or factory, or sometimes they do 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:14.960 other interesting things like trying to put food in the 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.600 mouth of the elephant, trying to help it stand up. 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:22.240 So when an elephant has passed away, scientists have recorded 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.480 that other elephants will line up and one by one 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.960 smell and touch the dead elephant. In one famous experiment, 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:33.200 scientists place the skulls of different animals in front of 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:36.720 elephants to see which ones they would interact with. Some 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:40.439 of the skulls were of rhinoceross, some were of buffalo, 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:44.439 and some were of elephants. Scientists found that the elephants 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:47.480 would pick up and examine the skulls of elephants more 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:50.360 than they did the others, which meant that elephants have 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:55.880 a unique curiosity about dead members of their own species. Next, 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:59.239 doctor Monceaut talked about an orca named Tealiqua. 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.560 So perhaps one of the behaviors that has received the 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:08.520 most attention is that of deceased infant carrying. For instance, 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:10.320 there was a very famous case, the case of the 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:14.280 orca Teliqua, who made the news in the summer of 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:18.160 twenty eighteen when she was seen carrying her baby scorpse 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:22.400 for seventeen days and over one thousand miles, which is insane, 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:24.960 and she was recently in the news again because she 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:27.480 was doing it for a second time with another of 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:31.280 her calves who had also died. So it's very very tragic. 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:35.600 So this orca whale telikua would hold on to her 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.840 dead baby and continue to push her and keep her 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.600 from sinking for weeks. And this behavior of holding on 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:46.520 to their dead young happens in other species of animals. 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:49.080 It's a behavior that we see in a lot of 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:54.000 mammalian mothers, so mammal species in which there is a 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:58.080 prolonged period of maternal care. And what we see here 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:02.400 is that very often when the baby dies, the mother 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:06.719 seems to have a hard time accepting this reality and 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:10.720 holds onto the corpse for a prolonged period of time. 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:15.360 But wouldn't that tell you that maybe the animal doesn't 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.959 understand death or has the wrong understanding of what has 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:20.000 happened to their baby. 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:25.320 So some people have put forward this hypothesis. The most 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:29.560 important takeaway from this behavior is probably not so much 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:32.160 that they're understanding death, but the fact that they're really 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:37.880 grieving their baby's death. And this may be accompanied by 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:40.200 a concept of death, but it may also be part 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:43.440 of the process through which the animal learns about death 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:47.160 through holding onto this baby, maybe hoping that it will 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:51.440 revive and ultimately seeing that it doesn't and deciding to 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:53.440 let it go, which they eventually do. 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:58.840 Wow, that's fascinating. This behavior of mothers continuing to carry 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:01.520 their babies that have passed the way has been seen 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:07.000 in Wales, chimpanzees, dolphins, and even giraffes. And this is 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:09.920 where we touch on the concept of grief. According to 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:12.720 doctor Muntzel, grief is not the same thing as an 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:17.080 understanding of death, and in fact they're independent. You can 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:21.040 have grief without understanding death. For example, you can grieve 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.040 the loss of something that wasn't alive, like your house, 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:26.760 or you can grieve a breakup with someone you loved. 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.680 And you can understand death without grieving. For example, you 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:34.000 might be glad that someone you didn't like died. Okay, 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.320 the last example doctor Munsoll brought up involves not just 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.000 understanding death but faking it. 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.920 So one of my favorite examples here is the apossum, 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:47.600 which is in the title of my book and in 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:50.240 the cover as well. And the apossum is very interesting 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:55.560 because the apossum famously plays possum right. The apossum plays 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:59.440 dead when she feels threatened, and she does this in 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:03.560 a bare, very spectacular way. It's a very very complex 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:08.440 defense mechanism. The apossum will adopt the bodily and facial 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.920 expression of a corpse. Her body temperature is reduced, her 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:15.320 breathing and heart rate are reduced. She expels this putrid 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:19.600 smelling liquid from her glance. She stops responding to the 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:22.160 world very radically, so you can pick her up and 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:23.640 she just doesn't respond. 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:26.760 She plays dead. Basically, she pretends to be dead. 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:30.480 It's like putting on a corpse disguise. Even her tongue 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:34.960 turns blue. So it's very impressive, very very elaborate. 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.880 But does that mean that it understands death. 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:43.400 For the apossum? This is probably an automatic behavior. I 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:47.640 don't think the apossum understands that she's playing dead. It 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.800 doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the opossum's mind. But 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:54.800 if this behavior has evolved, there needs to have been 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:58.360 the predator's concept of death. This is only going to 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:03.520 work if it's actual convincing the predator, right, So this 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:06.960 behavior is showing us the predators understand death what they 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:09.960 take to be a convincing display of death. 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:14.000 Okay, this is pretty cool. What doctor Monceux is saying, 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:17.680 is that an opossum plane dead. Doesn't tell us anything 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:20.840 about whether the opossum understands death. It might just be 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:24.280 a reflex or an instinct for them. But it does 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.800 tell you that the predator understands death, or at least 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:31.119 that it reacts to the signs of something appearing to 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:34.720 be dead. The question is not how do you pretend 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:37.480 to be dead? The question is how do you convince 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:40.120 another animal that you are dead? 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:44.280 Exactly. It's like stick insects. They don't need to understand 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:47.520 that they look like sticks in order for their appearance 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:52.120 to be advantageous, but we know that their predators mistake 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:55.000 them for sticks and don't want to eat sticks. It's 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:58.080 telling us something about their predators' minds. Right. 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.040 So then in this case, it's example tells us that 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:05.000 there is some understanding of the state of being alive 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:05.720 and death. 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:10.360 That's right, and that they understand dead individuals to look 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:14.160 a certain way, feel a certain way, that they expect 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:18.280 different behaviors from dead individuals. It's very interesting. It really 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.760 gives us a window into the minds of these animals. 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:26.160 Okay, so lots of different animals from chimpanzees to whales, 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:29.960 to predators like wolves, and by extension, dogs and cats 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:33.560 seem to react to dead animals and they act different 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.399 because of it. But does that mean that they understand death? 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:40.440 Maybe in the same way that you or I understand 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.680 what it means to die. Now, the big danger here 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:47.000 is to see an animal doing something and then assume 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:52.359 that it has human emotions or intentions. This is called anthropomorphizing. 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:54.760 Here's how doctor Monceaux explains it. 0:18:55.560 --> 0:19:01.639 Anthropomorphism is something that anyone who studies animals is really 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:07.840 afraid of, because humans have this tendency to anthropomorphize everything. 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:12.280 You know, even like our computer stops working and we're like, oh, 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:14.680 it doesn't want to work, or you know, we get 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:17.879 angry at our car if it breaks down. We attribute 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:22.840 intentions to inanimate objects all the time, and certainly we 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:26.639 do this all the time with our pets. We're constantly 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:30.560 interpreting their behavior in human ways. We send each other 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:34.439 videos of animals doing something and some funny music that 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:37.760 makes it look like they're dancing or whatever. So it's 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:43.040 understood that when you entropomorphize an animal, you are mistakingly 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:47.919 describing their behavior in human terms. So you're attributing to 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:50.480 them a human quality that they don't actually have. 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:53.919 So it'd be a mistake to see, for example, a 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:56.959 whale carrying their calf that's passed away. I think that 0:19:57.000 --> 0:20:00.359 they're grieving just like a human mother would. Or to 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.560 see a chimpanzee carrest her friend who's about to pass away, 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.560 and think that they are being tender and caring, like 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.360 how we would treat someone close to us under deathbed. 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:12.440 At the same time, doctor Monteux says it could also 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.360 be a mistake to do the opposite. 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:20.040 I think that there's also the complimentary worry, which has 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.480 to do with the other side of the coin, what 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:28.440 Kristin Andrews and Brian Husk called anthropectomy, which consists of 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:34.240 mistakenly denying a human typical characteristic to an animal. So 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:39.520 if we say that an animal is grieving when she's not, 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:44.360 we would be anthropomorphizing the animal. But if we say no, 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:48.320 she can't be grieving because that's human exclusive when she 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:53.000 actually is grieving. These are both false descriptions of reality, 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:55.760 and there's no reason to fear one over the other. 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.560 So we have to be careful not to over attribute, 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:02.600 but also not to under attribute. We have to really 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:06.560 try to find the description that is true that actually 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:09.080 captures what the animal is like. 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.240 So how do we make sense of what we see 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:15.760 in the animal kingdom? How do we understand how animals 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:19.080 understand death? To answer this, we need to dig into 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:22.840 what it means to understand death. When we come back, 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:25.359 I'm going to ask our two experts this question, and 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.560 hopefully we'll put the whole mystery of whether animals understand 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:32.080 death to rest. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:39.359 with more science stuff and we're back. 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:40.959 Okay. 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:45.520 So, animals ranging from chimpanzees to elephants to whales seem 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:49.439 to react to animals dying in ways that seem almost human. 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:52.640 And we know that predators, which include cats and dogs, 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:57.080 seem to instinctively know the difference between something alive and dead. 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:01.399 But does that mean they understand death. To answer this question, 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:05.399 we need to define what it means to understand death. 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:08.639 None of us are born with an understanding of it. 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:11.159 It's something we gain as we grow up, and it 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:15.520 typically comes in stages. Here's that doctor Anderson describes it. 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:22.880 I think most thanatologists, those people who study death and buying, 0:22:23.240 --> 0:22:28.040 particularly in humans, would I agree that we humans share 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:34.639 four basic aspects or components of our concept of death. 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:40.280 One is that its death is irreversible. Once something or 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:45.160 someone is dead, that's the aint coming back. The second 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:50.920 one is probably the notion that a dead individual is 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:57.840 completely non functional. They can't perceive anything, there's no mental activity, 0:22:58.040 --> 0:23:03.240 there's no emotions, there's no or agency. They're completely in 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:06.680 theer lumps of meat, if you like. 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:11.600 So an understanding of death, most scientists agree, is like 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:15.120 a table that stands on four legs. The first leg 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:19.240 is non functionality, basically that a body can't move or 0:23:19.280 --> 0:23:24.240 do anything once it's passed away. The second leg is irreversibility, 0:23:24.480 --> 0:23:27.280 the idea that once it happens, there's no going back. 0:23:27.760 --> 0:23:31.000 The third and fourth legs are a little more subtle. 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:34.959 The third one is this notion of what many people 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:39.560 refer to as universality, and related to that, some people 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:44.680 refer to it as inevitability, the idea that everyone, every 0:23:44.720 --> 0:23:50.800 living thing will eventually meet its demise and cease to exist. 0:23:51.160 --> 0:23:55.200 And the final one is causality, that we know basically 0:23:55.520 --> 0:23:56.880 what causes death. 0:23:57.760 --> 0:24:00.880 So those are the four legs of a four understanding 0:24:00.960 --> 0:24:04.920 of death. The third leg is universality, the idea that 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:08.720 all living things will inevitably die, and the fourth leg 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:12.879 is causality, meaning having an understanding of what causes an 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:17.080 individual to die. Now, most mature humans have a grasp 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:19.600 of all four ideas, and so we can say that 0:24:19.680 --> 0:24:22.560 we have a full understanding of the concept of death. 0:24:22.800 --> 0:24:24.840 But if you think back to when you were a kid, 0:24:25.240 --> 0:24:27.480 you might remember that you didn't know all of these 0:24:27.520 --> 0:24:30.520 things all at once. You might have learned these in 0:24:30.560 --> 0:24:34.840 a sequence, or maybe you partially learned them at different times, 0:24:34.840 --> 0:24:38.879 depending on your life experience or who you talk to. Okay, 0:24:39.119 --> 0:24:41.560 now that we've said what it means to understand death, 0:24:41.880 --> 0:24:44.880 let's see what our experts say about whether animals can 0:24:45.000 --> 0:24:46.480 have this understanding. 0:24:47.600 --> 0:24:52.320 Okay, if we go back to those four components, irreversibility, 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:58.400 non functionality, the universality of death, and the causality what 0:24:58.480 --> 0:25:02.960 causes death. I think what we know about how chimpanzees 0:25:03.040 --> 0:25:08.360 respond to dead individuals. For me, it takes the box 0:25:09.040 --> 0:25:15.800 for understanding the irreversibility of death. A dead individual is 0:25:15.880 --> 0:25:19.320 not going to come back to life. When you see 0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:24.639 a group of chimpanzees reactions to a dead juvenile, or 0:25:24.720 --> 0:25:28.840 a dead adult. Then you'll see that they really behave 0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:32.600 towards the corpse in which that they would never do 0:25:33.040 --> 0:25:36.600 to that individual when it was alive. And I think 0:25:36.680 --> 0:25:40.800 they're learning that we can do anything with this chimpanzee. 0:25:41.119 --> 0:25:44.920 This chimpanzee is not going to react. It doesn't feel anything. 0:25:45.240 --> 0:25:48.320 We can pound on its dest we can jump up 0:25:48.359 --> 0:25:51.639 and down on it. It's never going to move. So 0:25:51.720 --> 0:25:57.560 that takes also the non functionality component. So we've got 0:25:57.640 --> 0:26:04.840 the understand the reversibility. They understand nonfunctionality. I think about causality. 0:26:05.280 --> 0:26:10.000 I think chimpanzees have some understanding about what causes death. 0:26:10.400 --> 0:26:13.280 If they see a chimpanzee falling from a great height 0:26:13.720 --> 0:26:17.240 and it's no longer moving, if you see a chimpanzee 0:26:17.280 --> 0:26:20.920