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No two humans

no two humans process the death of a loved one the same. What about other animals?

For instance, in the case of chimpanzees, what we see is that there is huge variability in how they react to death.

It's Thursday, October 24th, and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm Sci-Fi producer Shishana Bucksbaum.

Throughout human history, humans have given a lot of thought to death.

We grapple with the inevitability of mortality. We create elaborate burial rituals and we decide how best to mourn the loss of a loved one.

But what about other animals? How do they understand death?

Here's Sci-Fi producer Kathleen Davis, in conversation with Dr. Susanna Monceau,

author of Playing Possum, how animals understand death,

an associate professor of philosophy at the National Distance Education University in Madrid, Spain.

Dr. Manseau, welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

So I want to jump right in and talk about the animal that's in the title of your book,

which is a possum, or as they're sometimes called opossums.

What's so special about possums and their relationship with death?

Yeah, so the opossum is an animal that I find really fascinating, apart from the fact that they're super cute in my

opinion. The opossum when she feels threatened and she feels like she cannot

escape she she pretends that she's dead but like she can't

pretends that she's dead.

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