Is animal grief real?

Unexplainable

Vox

Life Sciences, Science, Natural Sciences

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 27 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"? (First published in 2023) Guests: Jennifer Vonk, comparative/cognitive psychologist at Oakland University; Jessica Pierce, bioethicist and author of several books about animals; Susana Monsó, animal ethicist and a philosopher and author of Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠⁠unexplainable@vox.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In time for Black Friday at Dell Technologies.
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0:23.3	In 2018, media outlets started covering the story of a killer whale.
0:28.5	This week, there's been a lot of whale news.
0:31.1	This killer whale had had a baby, a calf.
0:34.4	Then, soon after the birth, that calf died.
0:40.8	And the killer whale started to do something unusual. For 17 days, she's been carrying her dead calf on her back. For hundreds of kilometers,
0:47.8	a thousand miles. I say the orca is laboring through the water as she carries the calf either by
0:53.7	one fin or pushing it through the water on her head.
0:57.9	News anchors, politicians, lots of people commented on this situation.
1:03.8	And many of them had a specific word for the behavior of this whale.
1:09.7	They called it grief.
1:11.9	We saw a mother's grief.
1:13.8	The grieving mom just couldn't let her go.
1:16.2	They have grief.
1:17.2	They feel grief.
1:18.0	These mothers, just like humans do.
1:20.1	They're huge mammals.
	...

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