Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. My
Speaker 1: name is Hoorge Jam and to me. On the program,
Speaker 1: we are answering the question do animals, like your pet
Speaker 1: or animals in the wild understand death. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking to a psychologist who's been studying chimpanzees for over
Speaker 1: forty years, and we're gonna hear from a philosopher of
Speaker 1: animal minds got obsessed with this topic as a way
Speaker 1: to deal with their own mortality. So do dogs dwell
Speaker 1: on their own demise or do possums ponder their pastor?
Speaker 1: Let's find out as we answer the question do animals
Speaker 1: understand death?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 1: Everyone, I thought I'd start the episode with one of
Speaker 1: the most fascinating interviews I've done for this show. It's
Speaker 1: with a psychologist named James Anderson. Doctor Anderson is now
Speaker 1: a professor emeritus at Kyoto University, and he has spent
Speaker 1: the last forty years studying chimpanzees and monkeys and their
Speaker 1: behavior they eat, sleep, and work together. But then in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, something incredible happened. His team of
Speaker 1: researchers recorded, for the first time ever on video, the
Speaker 1: passing away of an adult chimpanzee surrounded by her close group.
Speaker 1: One of his students, Louise Locke, was studying a group
Speaker 1: of chimpanzees at the Blair Drummon Safari Park in the
Speaker 1: middle of Scotland, and she was just there to study
Speaker 1: their sleep patterns, but almost by accident, they happened to
Speaker 1: record the moment of death of a chimpanzee named Pansy.
Speaker 1: Here's how doctor Anderson describes it.
Speaker 2: One member of the chimpanzee group was at the time
Speaker 2: the oldest chimpanzee in the UK. She was around sixty
Speaker 2: years of age. She had been a circus chimpanzee in
Speaker 2: her early life, but she was now suffering from age
Speaker 2: relate to diseases. And then one day the keeper of
Speaker 2: the chimpanzees noticed that she was breathing very heavily and
Speaker 2: she thought she's not going to last very long.
Speaker 1: So the oldest chimpanzee in the UK, Pansy looked like
Speaker 1: she was about to pass away. At this point, this
Speaker 1: very part caretaker had to make a choice about what
Speaker 1: to do, and he decided to let nature take its
Speaker 1: course and let her pass away. Surrounded by her closed group.
Speaker 1: He let her be, but he left the video camera
Speaker 1: running all night. When the researchers reviewed the video the
Speaker 1: next day, they were shocked. Can you describe what you
Speaker 1: saw in that video?
Speaker 2: Yes? Well, what was clear is that by the time
Speaker 2: the video started, the old female chimpanzee, she was lying
Speaker 2: up on a platform. Occasionally the chimpanzees would come over
Speaker 2: and groom the old female. But then three of the
Speaker 2: chimpanzees and the group came over and gathered around her
Speaker 2: at once, and this was the first time this was happening,
Speaker 2: and two of them were grooming her, her daughter and
Speaker 2: her long term friend, another adult female, and then the
Speaker 2: adult male in the group came over and he bent
Speaker 2: down and looked closely into her face, and then he
Speaker 2: took her by the shoulder and gradually shoot her shoulder
Speaker 2: while staring at close range into her face. And then
Speaker 2: he laid her shoulder back down on the ground, looked
Speaker 2: at her, and then moved away.
Speaker 1: As Pansy laid there dying, her daughter and her best
Speaker 1: friend gathered around her and seemed to be comforting her,
Speaker 1: holding her hand and grooming her. The adult male of
Speaker 1: the group came and shook her as if he was
Speaker 1: trying to shake her back to life.
Speaker 2: A few moments later, Rosie, her daughter, and then her
Speaker 2: lifelong friend remained holding her hand, and that was most
Speaker 2: of the contacts over the next several hours. Not long
Speaker 2: after that period, the female was dead by then, and
Speaker 2: what we had witnessed was the precise moment where the
Speaker 2: adult male seemed to be checking for any signs of
Speaker 2: life and perhaps realizing that she had gone, when the
Speaker 2: other two members of the group were giving the final
Speaker 2: moments of comfort to the adult female. Her daughter slept
Speaker 2: beside her all night long, and then the following morning
Speaker 2: her long term friend came over and sat by her,
Speaker 2: and because of that responses by the male, he had
Speaker 2: left some straw on her, so she gently cleaned the
Speaker 2: straw of her body and her face and just sat
Speaker 2: by her for a while.
Speaker 1: Wow. Now what amazed doctor Anderson was how close this
Speaker 1: behavior was what you might observe in humans. Pessy's family
Speaker 1: seemed to have gathered to accompany her and to be
Speaker 1: close to her in her final moments. When doctor Anderson
Speaker 1: and his team wrote a paper describing this video, they
Speaker 1: wrote about how this seemed very similar to what humans
Speaker 1: would do. Here was his reaction.
Speaker 2: That's what I described in the paper some of the
Speaker 2: responses that have been described in human societies when they're
Speaker 2: dealing with the final moments of our whose relative we
Speaker 2: see time and time again. This gentle contacts quietness, caressing
Speaker 2: the corpse sometimes in some individuals, and outburst of anger
Speaker 2: directed towards the crops, especially by close relatives who really
Speaker 2: feel anger at being left. Attempts to check for signs
Speaker 2: of life. You know, now we humans, we've got more
Speaker 2: medical ways of doing it, checking for pulse. But you know,
Speaker 2: the chimpanzee was doing what he knows. We concluded by saying, well,
Speaker 2: at least some aspects of the response to the peaceful
Speaker 2: death within our group may have parallels between chimpanzees and
Speaker 2: our own species. And I've got some interesting reactions.
Speaker 1: When doctor Anderson published the paper describing this video, along
Speaker 1: with his PhD student and the Safari Parks caretaker, caused
Speaker 1: a media frenzy is university. At the time, the University
Speaker 1: of Stirling was inundated with phone calls and emails. They
Speaker 1: were invited to be on TV, radio magazines in the
Speaker 1: UK and across the world, and it helped give a
Speaker 1: spark to the general conversation about whether animals understand death now.
Speaker 1: Part of the excitement here is that these observations of
Speaker 1: animals at moments of death are rare. One of the
Speaker 1: closest examples on record that doctor Anderson could find had
Speaker 1: happened thirty years before in the Gombe National Park in Tanzania.
Speaker 2: An accidental death reported in wild chimpanzees when an adult
Speaker 2: male fell out of a tree and died instantly on
Speaker 2: hitting the ground. And then the response of the other
Speaker 2: chimpanzees couldn't have been more different. The group members erupted
Speaker 2: into a frenzy of excitement and alarm, embracing each other, screaming,
Speaker 2: running towards the body, staring at it but never coming
Speaker 2: into contact with a disbelief at first, are running around
Speaker 2: in almost panic. There was also lots of mutual embracing,
Speaker 2: as if trying to reassure other individuals.
Speaker 1: You know, my reaction when you just told that story
Speaker 1: was that that also seems very human in how we
Speaker 1: would react if we suddenly saw traumatic death.
Speaker 2: Yes. Almost.
Speaker 1: This paper also helped push forward a new field of
Speaker 1: science called comparative thanatology. The word panatology means the study
Speaker 1: of dying and it comes from Thanatos, the Greek god
Speaker 1: of death, and yes, it's also what inspired the name
Speaker 1: of the supervillain Thanus in the Marvel movies. Now, the
Speaker 1: word comparative in comparative panatology means you're studying dying in
Speaker 1: different species of animals, not just humans and apes, to
Speaker 1: find out what they have in common and what that
Speaker 1: tells us about evolution and whether humans are unique or
Speaker 1: not in how we relate to our own mortality. Next,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to someone who's written a book
Speaker 1: about comparative panatology and how animals understand death. And she's
Speaker 1: looked at species ranging from ants to possums, to elephants
Speaker 1: to wales, and when we come back, she can tell
Speaker 1: us how all of these animals experience their own expiration.
Speaker 1: Stay with us, you're listening to science stuff. Hey, welcome back.
Speaker 1: We just talked about how chimpanzees are closest relatives react
Speaker 1: to one of their own passing away. The question now
Speaker 1: is how do other animals react to death? Are their
Speaker 1: signs that they understand what it is. To answer this question,
Speaker 1: I talk to someone who is a philosopher of animal minds.
Speaker 1: Doctor Susanamonceau is a professor at the National University of
Speaker 1: Distance Education in Spain, and she's written a book called
Speaker 1: Playing Possum, How Animals Understand Death. I asked doctor Monse
Speaker 1: what got her interested in this question.
Speaker 3: I had done my PhD. Whether animals could behave morally,
Speaker 3: whether they have emotions like empathy, and so I've always
Speaker 3: been interested in questions that have to do with those
Speaker 3: capacities that we tend to think of as uniquely human.
Speaker 3: There was an emergence of field biologists documenting animals reacting
Speaker 3: in interesting ways to dead individuals. At the same time,
Speaker 3: there's also kind of a personal sight to the story.
Speaker 3: I was about to turn thirty, and I think I
Speaker 3: became obsessed with death. A lot of people have this
Speaker 3: period of existential angst. My grandmother had just died, and
Speaker 3: I think turning thirty also was symbolic in that really
Speaker 3: a moment where you're definitely an adult. You can no
Speaker 3: longer pretend like you're just a youngster. Yeah, I was
Speaker 3: really afraid of it.
Speaker 1: I asked doctor Mansa to tell us of different examples
Speaker 1: from her book of animals reacting to another animal passing away,
Speaker 1: starting with elephants.
Speaker 3: So elephants is a typical animal that everyone thinks of.
Speaker 3: Because elephants are like the animal that has some special
Speaker 3: relationship with death, people think of elephant graveyards, which apparently
Speaker 3: are a myth. They don't really seem to go any
Speaker 3: specific place to die.
Speaker 1: That's right. Elephant graveyards, meaning a special place where elephants
Speaker 1: go when they're ready to die, are not really supported
Speaker 1: by scientific evidence. It's probably more of a myth. However,
Speaker 1: elephants do seem to act in a special way when
Speaker 1: other elephants pass away, but.
Speaker 3: They do seem to be very interested in death, and
Speaker 3: specifically in the deaths of fellow elephants, and they will
Speaker 3: visit the corpses of elephants that have died, even if
Speaker 3: they're not related. They visit these corpses and they touch them,
Speaker 3: they sniff them, they are very interested in them, which
Speaker 3: doesn't happen with corpses of other animals. There's like a
Speaker 3: parade of different elephant families that come to it and
Speaker 3: interact with the corpse in some way, and some of
Speaker 3: the interactions are tactile or factory, or sometimes they do
Speaker 3: other interesting things like trying to put food in the
Speaker 3: mouth of the elephant, trying to help it stand up.
Speaker 1: So when an elephant has passed away, scientists have recorded
Speaker 1: that other elephants will line up and one by one
Speaker 1: smell and touch the dead elephant. In one famous experiment,
Speaker 1: scientists place the skulls of different animals in front of
Speaker 1: elephants to see which ones they would interact with. Some
Speaker 1: of the skulls were of rhinoceross, some were of buffalo,
Speaker 1: and some were of elephants. Scientists found that the elephants
Speaker 1: would pick up and examine the skulls of elephants more
Speaker 1: than they did the others, which meant that elephants have
Speaker 1: a unique curiosity about dead members of their own species. Next,
Speaker 1: doctor Monceaut talked about an orca named Tealiqua.
Speaker 3: So perhaps one of the behaviors that has received the
Speaker 3: most attention is that of deceased infant carrying. For instance,
Speaker 3: there was a very famous case, the case of the
Speaker 3: orca Teliqua, who made the news in the summer of
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen when she was seen carrying her baby scorpse
Speaker 3: for seventeen days and over one thousand miles, which is insane,
Speaker 3: and she was recently in the news again because she
Speaker 3: was doing it for a second time with another of
Speaker 3: her calves who had also died. So it's very very tragic.
Speaker 1: So this orca whale telikua would hold on to her
Speaker 1: dead baby and continue to push her and keep her
Speaker 1: from sinking for weeks. And this behavior of holding on
Speaker 1: to their dead young happens in other species of animals.
Speaker 3: It's a behavior that we see in a lot of
Speaker 3: mammalian mothers, so mammal species in which there is a
Speaker 3: prolonged period of maternal care. And what we see here
Speaker 3: is that very often when the baby dies, the mother
Speaker 3: seems to have a hard time accepting this reality and
Speaker 3: holds onto the corpse for a prolonged period of time.
Speaker 1: But wouldn't that tell you that maybe the animal doesn't
Speaker 1: understand death or has the wrong understanding of what has
Speaker 1: happened to their baby.
Speaker 3: So some people have put forward this hypothesis. The most
Speaker 3: important takeaway from this behavior is probably not so much
Speaker 3: that they're understanding death, but the fact that they're really
Speaker 3: grieving their baby's death. And this may be accompanied by
Speaker 3: a concept of death, but it may also be part
Speaker 3: of the process through which the animal learns about death
Speaker 3: through holding onto this baby, maybe hoping that it will
Speaker 3: revive and ultimately seeing that it doesn't and deciding to
Speaker 3: let it go, which they eventually do.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's fascinating. This behavior of mothers continuing to carry
Speaker 1: their babies that have passed the way has been seen
Speaker 1: in Wales, chimpanzees, dolphins, and even giraffes. And this is
Speaker 1: where we touch on the concept of grief. According to
Speaker 1: doctor Muntzel, grief is not the same thing as an
Speaker 1: understanding of death, and in fact they're independent. You can
Speaker 1: have grief without understanding death. For example, you can grieve
Speaker 1: the loss of something that wasn't alive, like your house,
Speaker 1: or you can grieve a breakup with someone you loved.
Speaker 1: And you can understand death without grieving. For example, you
Speaker 1: might be glad that someone you didn't like died. Okay,
Speaker 1: the last example doctor Munsoll brought up involves not just
Speaker 1: understanding death but faking it.
Speaker 3: So one of my favorite examples here is the apossum,
Speaker 3: which is in the title of my book and in
Speaker 3: the cover as well. And the apossum is very interesting
Speaker 3: because the apossum famously plays possum right. The apossum plays
Speaker 3: dead when she feels threatened, and she does this in
Speaker 3: a bare, very spectacular way. It's a very very complex
Speaker 3: defense mechanism. The apossum will adopt the bodily and facial
Speaker 3: expression of a corpse. Her body temperature is reduced, her
Speaker 3: breathing and heart rate are reduced. She expels this putrid
Speaker 3: smelling liquid from her glance. She stops responding to the
Speaker 3: world very radically, so you can pick her up and
Speaker 3: she just doesn't respond.
Speaker 1: She plays dead. Basically, she pretends to be dead.
Speaker 3: It's like putting on a corpse disguise. Even her tongue
Speaker 3: turns blue. So it's very impressive, very very elaborate.
Speaker 1: But does that mean that it understands death.
Speaker 3: For the apossum? This is probably an automatic behavior. I
Speaker 3: don't think the apossum understands that she's playing dead. It
Speaker 3: doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the opossum's mind. But
Speaker 3: if this behavior has evolved, there needs to have been
Speaker 3: the predator's concept of death. This is only going to
Speaker 3: work if it's actual convincing the predator, right, So this
Speaker 3: behavior is showing us the predators understand death what they
Speaker 3: take to be a convincing display of death.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is pretty cool. What doctor Monceux is saying,
Speaker 1: is that an opossum plane dead. Doesn't tell us anything
Speaker 1: about whether the opossum understands death. It might just be
Speaker 1: a reflex or an instinct for them. But it does
Speaker 1: tell you that the predator understands death, or at least
Speaker 1: that it reacts to the signs of something appearing to
Speaker 1: be dead. The question is not how do you pretend
Speaker 1: to be dead? The question is how do you convince
Speaker 1: another animal that you are dead?
Speaker 3: Exactly. It's like stick insects. They don't need to understand
Speaker 3: that they look like sticks in order for their appearance
Speaker 3: to be advantageous, but we know that their predators mistake
Speaker 3: them for sticks and don't want to eat sticks. It's
Speaker 3: telling us something about their predators' minds. Right.
Speaker 1: So then in this case, it's example tells us that
Speaker 1: there is some understanding of the state of being alive
Speaker 1: and death.
Speaker 3: That's right, and that they understand dead individuals to look
Speaker 3: a certain way, feel a certain way, that they expect
Speaker 3: different behaviors from dead individuals. It's very interesting. It really
Speaker 3: gives us a window into the minds of these animals.
Speaker 1: Okay, so lots of different animals from chimpanzees to whales,
Speaker 1: to predators like wolves, and by extension, dogs and cats
Speaker 1: seem to react to dead animals and they act different
Speaker 1: because of it. But does that mean that they understand death?
Speaker 1: Maybe in the same way that you or I understand
Speaker 1: what it means to die. Now, the big danger here
Speaker 1: is to see an animal doing something and then assume
Speaker 1: that it has human emotions or intentions. This is called anthropomorphizing.
Speaker 1: Here's how doctor Monceaux explains it.
Speaker 3: Anthropomorphism is something that anyone who studies animals is really
Speaker 3: afraid of, because humans have this tendency to anthropomorphize everything.
Speaker 3: You know, even like our computer stops working and we're like, oh,
Speaker 3: it doesn't want to work, or you know, we get
Speaker 3: angry at our car if it breaks down. We attribute
Speaker 3: intentions to inanimate objects all the time, and certainly we
Speaker 3: do this all the time with our pets. We're constantly
Speaker 3: interpreting their behavior in human ways. We send each other
Speaker 3: videos of animals doing something and some funny music that
Speaker 3: makes it look like they're dancing or whatever. So it's
Speaker 3: understood that when you entropomorphize an animal, you are mistakingly
Speaker 3: describing their behavior in human terms. So you're attributing to
Speaker 3: them a human quality that they don't actually have.
Speaker 1: So it'd be a mistake to see, for example, a
Speaker 1: whale carrying their calf that's passed away. I think that
Speaker 1: they're grieving just like a human mother would. Or to
Speaker 1: see a chimpanzee carrest her friend who's about to pass away,
Speaker 1: and think that they are being tender and caring, like
Speaker 1: how we would treat someone close to us under deathbed.
Speaker 1: At the same time, doctor Monteux says it could also
Speaker 1: be a mistake to do the opposite.
Speaker 3: I think that there's also the complimentary worry, which has
Speaker 3: to do with the other side of the coin, what
Speaker 3: Kristin Andrews and Brian Husk called anthropectomy, which consists of
Speaker 3: mistakenly denying a human typical characteristic to an animal. So
Speaker 3: if we say that an animal is grieving when she's not,
Speaker 3: we would be anthropomorphizing the animal. But if we say no,
Speaker 3: she can't be grieving because that's human exclusive when she
Speaker 3: actually is grieving. These are both false descriptions of reality,
Speaker 3: and there's no reason to fear one over the other.
Speaker 3: So we have to be careful not to over attribute,
Speaker 3: but also not to under attribute. We have to really
Speaker 3: try to find the description that is true that actually
Speaker 3: captures what the animal is like.
Speaker 1: So how do we make sense of what we see
Speaker 1: in the animal kingdom? How do we understand how animals
Speaker 1: understand death? To answer this, we need to dig into
Speaker 1: what it means to understand death. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask our two experts this question, and
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll put the whole mystery of whether animals understand
Speaker 1: death to rest. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: with more science stuff and we're back.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So, animals ranging from chimpanzees to elephants to whales seem
Speaker 1: to react to animals dying in ways that seem almost human.
Speaker 1: And we know that predators, which include cats and dogs,
Speaker 1: seem to instinctively know the difference between something alive and dead.
Speaker 1: But does that mean they understand death. To answer this question,
Speaker 1: we need to define what it means to understand death.
Speaker 1: None of us are born with an understanding of it.
Speaker 1: It's something we gain as we grow up, and it
Speaker 1: typically comes in stages. Here's that doctor Anderson describes it.
Speaker 2: I think most thanatologists, those people who study death and buying,
Speaker 2: particularly in humans, would I agree that we humans share
Speaker 2: four basic aspects or components of our concept of death.
Speaker 2: One is that its death is irreversible. Once something or
Speaker 2: someone is dead, that's the aint coming back. The second
Speaker 2: one is probably the notion that a dead individual is
Speaker 2: completely non functional. They can't perceive anything, there's no mental activity,
Speaker 2: there's no emotions, there's no or agency. They're completely in
Speaker 2: theer lumps of meat, if you like.
Speaker 1: So an understanding of death, most scientists agree, is like
Speaker 1: a table that stands on four legs. The first leg
Speaker 1: is non functionality, basically that a body can't move or
Speaker 1: do anything once it's passed away. The second leg is irreversibility,
Speaker 1: the idea that once it happens, there's no going back.
Speaker 1: The third and fourth legs are a little more subtle.
Speaker 2: The third one is this notion of what many people
Speaker 2: refer to as universality, and related to that, some people
Speaker 2: refer to it as inevitability, the idea that everyone, every
Speaker 2: living thing will eventually meet its demise and cease to exist.
Speaker 2: And the final one is causality, that we know basically
Speaker 2: what causes death.
Speaker 1: So those are the four legs of a four understanding
Speaker 1: of death. The third leg is universality, the idea that
Speaker 1: all living things will inevitably die, and the fourth leg
Speaker 1: is causality, meaning having an understanding of what causes an
Speaker 1: individual to die. Now, most mature humans have a grasp
Speaker 1: of all four ideas, and so we can say that
Speaker 1: we have a full understanding of the concept of death.
Speaker 1: But if you think back to when you were a kid,
Speaker 1: you might remember that you didn't know all of these
Speaker 1: things all at once. You might have learned these in
Speaker 1: a sequence, or maybe you partially learned them at different times,
Speaker 1: depending on your life experience or who you talk to. Okay,
Speaker 1: now that we've said what it means to understand death,
Speaker 1: let's see what our experts say about whether animals can
Speaker 1: have this understanding.
Speaker 2: Okay, if we go back to those four components, irreversibility,
Speaker 2: non functionality, the universality of death, and the causality what
Speaker 2: causes death. I think what we know about how chimpanzees
Speaker 2: respond to dead individuals. For me, it takes the box
Speaker 2: for understanding the irreversibility of death. A dead individual is
Speaker 2: not going to come back to life. When you see
Speaker 2: a group of chimpanzees reactions to a dead juvenile, or
Speaker 2: a dead adult. Then you'll see that they really behave
Speaker 2: towards the corpse in which that they would never do
Speaker 2: to that individual when it was alive. And I think
Speaker 2: they're learning that we can do anything with this chimpanzee.
Speaker 2: This chimpanzee is not going to react. It doesn't feel anything.
Speaker 2: We can pound on its dest we can jump up
Speaker 2: and down on it. It's never going to move. So
Speaker 2: that takes also the non functionality component. So we've got
Speaker 2: the understand the reversibility. They understand nonfunctionality. I think about causality.
Speaker 2: I think chimpanzees have some understanding about what causes death.
Speaker 2: If they see a chimpanzee falling from a great height
Speaker 2: and it's no longer moving, if you see a chimpanzee
Speaker 2: that's just being attacked by a leopard, then I think
Speaker 2: we understand that is the cause of death, that these
Speaker 2: ruins are fatal. So I think they've got some understanding
Speaker 2: of causality, not to the extent that we understand the
Speaker 2: biological causes of lack of oxygen or loss of blood,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless they have some understanding of external causes. But
Speaker 2: it takes me to the fourth component universality. For me,
Speaker 2: universality means that you realize that everyone is going to die.
Speaker 2: That means other individuals or that they're capable of dying.
Speaker 2: I think chimpanzees have that ability.
Speaker 1: So doctor Anderson thinks chimpanzees are capable of grasping most
Speaker 1: of the components of an understanding of death. They can
Speaker 1: understand nonfunctionality, irreversibility, some sense of causality, and most of
Speaker 1: the idea of universality. We'll come back to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. Then I asked doctor Monceiua this question about
Speaker 1: other animals like elephants, whales, cats, and dogs, and this
Speaker 1: is what she said, Well, what do all of those
Speaker 1: examples you've talked about in the animal kingdom? What do
Speaker 1: they tell us about whether animals understand death.
Speaker 3: Of course, it's still very early and we're still only
Speaker 3: starting to think about these questions. But I think that
Speaker 3: the concept of death it really boils down to the
Speaker 3: idea of understanding that individuals don't do the things that
Speaker 3: living individuals of their kind do, and that this is
Speaker 3: an irreversible state. I think that's what understanding death at
Speaker 3: its core is, and that's actually quite easy to reach
Speaker 3: because it's just not very complicated to understand. It's about
Speaker 3: having certain expectations about how living beings around you behave
Speaker 3: learning due to your past experiences that once death has happened,
Speaker 3: you can no longer expect these behaviors from the animal.
Speaker 3: And I think also that there are many different contexts
Speaker 3: where animals are going to be able to acquire the
Speaker 3: necessary experiences to learn about this.
Speaker 1: In other words, doctor Monceaux thinks that if you define
Speaker 1: an understanding of death as only needing two of the
Speaker 1: legs we talked about before, non functionality and irreversibility, then
Speaker 1: we can say that lots of animals understand death because
Speaker 1: those two ideas are not that complicated or hard to
Speaker 1: learn and understand. Meaning even your dog can figure out
Speaker 1: that a dead and smelly red is not moving and
Speaker 1: that it's not going to move again. Of course, you
Speaker 1: might think, well, the dog doesn't understand the other two
Speaker 1: ideas or legs, universality and causality. Doesn't that mean it
Speaker 1: doesn't really understand death. Well, that's only if you think
Speaker 1: that the human way of understanding death is the only
Speaker 1: way to understand death.
Speaker 3: We can find this idea in many texts in comparative penatology,
Speaker 3: where researchers are saying, you know, animals cannot understand infinity,
Speaker 3: or they don't have a concept of time, or they
Speaker 3: don't have a concept of absence, and therefore they can't
Speaker 3: understand death. So in a way, they're all over intellectualizing
Speaker 3: the concept of death. And what I do in my
Speaker 3: book is I turned that question into the question of
Speaker 3: do they have anything that counts as a concept of death,
Speaker 3: even if it's different from our own.
Speaker 1: Do animals understand death? The answer is yes, depending on
Speaker 1: what you mean by understanding death. If it means understanding
Speaker 1: it at a basic level, that it means you can't
Speaker 1: move once you're dead, and that it's irreversible, then lots
Speaker 1: of animals seem to understand death. But if you mean
Speaker 1: understanding more complex concepts like the medical causes of death
Speaker 1: or the idea that all creatures will eventually die, then
Speaker 1: it's probably not possible for most animals to understand death
Speaker 1: at the same level as humans. Now, as a last question,
Speaker 1: I asked our experts what all of this tells us
Speaker 1: about how humans are different from most animals, and they
Speaker 1: both agree there is one thing that seems unique to us,
Speaker 1: and that is an ability to understand the inevitability of
Speaker 1: our own mortality.
Speaker 2: Where I think the line might be drawing. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure that chimpanzees are capable of understanding their own mortality.
Speaker 2: They don't fall into the kind of feeling of entrapment
Speaker 2: and despair that humans sometimes do.
Speaker 3: You know, if an animal is don't about death, she
Speaker 3: has a very limited number of experiences, and she's not
Speaker 3: going to be able to reach on her own the
Speaker 3: understanding that everyone dies, whereas humans, you know, we understand
Speaker 3: that our death is inevitable because we've been told.
Speaker 1: We have language for it, whereas an animal maybe doesn't
Speaker 1: have language for it. That's right, Doctor Anderson doesn't think
Speaker 1: chimpanzees have the forethought to really imagine a world in
Speaker 1: which they don't themselves exist, and doctor Mossela thinks you
Speaker 1: need language to really grasp the concept of inevitability, which
Speaker 1: means respecial because we're able to appreciate the fact that,
Speaker 1: at least temporarily we are not dead. Okay, I lied.
Speaker 1: I did ask our experts one more question, and that
Speaker 1: is whether thinking about how animals deal with death had
Speaker 1: changed their own perspectives on the topic. Here's what they said,
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure that it has changed on view
Speaker 1: in general. I've had enough experience of death of people
Speaker 1: that I've known uncherished to accept that it's inevitable. I
Speaker 1: don't share it, and I hope that when it does come,
Speaker 1: I hopefully accept.
Speaker 3: So I think that studying it in animals has been
Speaker 3: very illuminating and somehow comforting, because, strangely enough, when you
Speaker 3: read enough about death and other species, you come to
Speaker 3: realize that it's a reality you just cannot escape. It's
Speaker 3: a deal that every single living being steps into. There's
Speaker 3: no other choice. If you want to be alive, then
Speaker 3: you have to die.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's understanding death that makes us appreciate life,
Speaker 1: and that seems to be lately human. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: See you next time you've been listening to science Stuff.
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Speaker 1: and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Pegram And you can
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