Do animals grieve?

Unexplainable

Vox

Life Sciences, Science, Natural Sciences

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A dog on its owner’s grave. A killer whale carrying around its dead calf. A goose that isolates when its mate dies. These behaviors in animals may look like human mourning, but should scientists call them "grief?" For more, go to http://vox.com/unexplainable It’s a great place to view show transcripts and read more about the topics on our show. Also, email us! unexplainable@vox.com We read every email. Jennifer Vonk's research study on pet cats reactions to the death of companion animals can be found here. Support Unexplainable by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In 2018, media outlets started covering the story of a killer whale.
0:08.7	This week there's been a lot of whale news.
0:10.9	This killer whale had had a baby, a calf, then soon after the birth, that calf died,
0:18.3	and the killer whale started to do something unusual.
0:21.7	For 17 days, she's been carrying her dead calf on her back.
0:25.8	400 of kilometers.
0:26.8	A thousand miles.
0:27.8	They say the orca is laboring through the water as she carries the calf, either by one
0:33.8	fin or pushing it through the water on her head.
0:37.7	News anchors, politicians, lots of people commented on this situation.
0:43.6	And many of them had a specific word for the behavior of this whale.
0:49.4	They called it grief.
0:51.7	We saw a mother's grief.
0:53.6	The grieving mom just couldn't let her go.
0:56.0	They have grief.
0:57.0	They feel grief.
0:58.0	These mothers just like humans do.
0:59.9	They're huge mammals.
1:01.6	But do killer whales feel grief just like humans do?
1:06.6	Does any non-human animal on the one hand, there are lots of compelling examples that
1:13.0	suggest that the answer could be yes.
1:16.1	Examples of animal species doing grief-like things.
	...

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