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In 2018, media outlets started

1:46

covering the story of a killer whale. This

1:49

week, there's been a lot of whale news. This

1:52

killer whale had had a baby, a calf.

1:55

Then soon after the birth, that calf

1:57

died.

1:58

And the killer whale… started to do something

2:01

unusual. For 17 days,

2:03

she's been carrying her dead calf on her

2:06

back. For hundreds of kilometers, a

2:08

thousand miles. They say the orca is

2:10

laboring through the water as she carries

2:13

the calf either by one fin or

2:15

pushing it through the water on her head.

2:18

News anchors, politicians, lots

2:20

of people commented on the situation.

2:24

And many of them had a specific

2:26

word for the behavior of

2:28

this whale. They called it

2:31

grief. We saw a mother's

2:33

grief. The grieving mom just

2:35

couldn't let her go. They have grief. They feel

2:38

grief. These mothers, just like humans

2:40

do. They're huge mammals. But

2:42

do killer whales feel grief

2:45

just like humans do? Does

2:47

any non-human animal? On

2:50

the one hand,

2:51

there are lots of compelling examples

2:53

that suggest that the answer could be yes.

2:56

Examples of animal species

2:58

doing grief-like things. The

3:01

man died earlier this month in a small

3:03

village. His dog was later found right

3:05

here at his gravesite, refusing

3:07

to leave even seven days without

3:10

food.

3:11

If you go on YouTube,

3:13

Facebook, various news outlets,

3:16

you can find videos like this.

3:18

Local villagers now plan on building a

3:20

kennel for the dog next to its master's grave.

3:22

Videos of dogs, but also videos of elephants,

3:25

visiting a corpse. And so you can

3:27

see that these elephants are kind of holding their

3:30

trunks out and smelling the body. Donkeys

3:33

gathering around a dead herd member

3:35

and making lots

3:36

of noise.

3:40

It's not just mammals. It's also birds. Such

3:43

as the case of Blossom the

3:45

goose. Sometimes when geese

3:47

lose a mate, they lose weight. They isolate

3:50

themselves. After Bud died, Blossom's

3:53

grief was as evident as any

3:55

humans. And when I watch

3:57

some of these videos, like, I get it. get

4:00

why it seems like animals grieve.

4:04

But for a lot of researchers, seems

4:06

like is not really good enough.

4:12

This is Unexplainable, I'm Burt

4:14

Pinkerton, and today on the show,

4:16

researchers give me the case for and

4:19

against saying that some animals

4:21

experience grief. It's

4:24

a weirdly trickier problem than

4:26

you might imagine, and their answers

4:28

help us understand what it takes

4:30

to really get inside another

4:33

creature's head.

4:49

To start,

4:49

if it looks like a grief and it quacks like a

4:52

grief, why not call it a grief, right? Like,

4:54

what is the problem here?

4:56

I reached out to a researcher named Jennifer Vonk,

4:59

who studies how animals think, including

5:01

how they think about death. And

5:04

she says that the first issue

5:06

here is that

5:07

grief itself is not super well

5:09

defined. I mean, sometimes

5:11

we try to study something in non-humans

5:14

and realize that we don't even have a good handle on

5:16

it in humans. And I think

5:18

it is, it's like asking, do people

5:20

fall in love? You know, different people might define

5:22

that very differently. There are definitions

5:25

out there, like the American Psychological Association

5:28

defines grief as the anguish

5:30

experienced after significant

5:32

loss, usually the death of a

5:34

beloved

5:35

person. But with that word

5:37

person, like, that definition kind

5:39

of assumes that you're dealing

5:42

not just with a human, but with a human understanding

5:44

of

5:45

death. I think

5:48

that grief, and this is just my

5:50

definition, I guess, it would entail

5:53

an understanding of the finality of that loss. Like,

5:56

the person is gone. It's

5:58

not fixable. never coming

6:00

back, it's permanent. And understanding

6:04

death in that kind of abstract

6:06

way, we don't have evidence

6:08

that animals have those kind of concepts.

6:11

It's not that she's some kind of cold-hearted monster

6:13

who thinks that animals are emotionless machines.

6:16

She very much gets the impulse to

6:18

attribute emotions to animals. And

6:21

at home, with her pet cats, she's

6:23

doing it all the time. My husband

6:25

and I are always talking about, like, oh, so-and-so

6:28

is jealous. Like, look how jealous

6:29

he is because I'm sitting with the other cat.

6:32

Or, I mean, their little expressions look

6:34

like they're angry or sulking or

6:36

jealous or like we interpret in that

6:38

way for sure. But Jennifer says that

6:41

when it comes to writing down, like, this

6:44

animal is experiencing jealousy

6:46

or anger or grief in a scientific

6:49

context, she's a lot more

6:51

cautious and she needs a lot

6:53

more evidence. I think it's a very difficult

6:56

question to answer because it

6:59

requires

6:59

having this sort of access

7:02

to their subjective experience, which

7:04

I, you know, as scientists, as much as we

7:06

would like to have that, everything

7:09

is kind of an inference based on their

7:11

external behavior. So, I mean,

7:13

I think we do. Sorry, my

7:15

eyes are running from allergies. In

7:18

this moment, Jennifer dabbed at her eyes

7:20

and nose with a tissue. And

7:22

if she hadn't been laughing and cracking jokes,

7:24

like, I might have thought she was

7:27

pretty upset.

7:28

And as she pointed out, like, this is kind

7:30

of the problem here. So if you were looking

7:33

at me, you might think I was experiencing grief

7:35

when really it's just an allergic reaction, but

7:37

on the outside, it looks exactly the same.

7:40

Now,

7:40

if I'm at a human funeral

7:43

for someone's relative, say, and they

7:45

are crying into a handkerchief, it's

7:47

not a huge leap for me to assume,

7:49

like,

7:50

that person is probably grieving, right?

7:52

They're probably not just experiencing

7:54

allergies. That's

7:56

because I'm fairly fluent in the

7:58

language of human. human emotional

8:00

reactions and can be pretty

8:03

confident in what they really mean. But

8:05

Jennifer says that animals could

8:07

have an entire emotional

8:10

language that means something really different

8:12

from our own.

8:13

We don't know what it's like to conceive of the world

8:15

as a killer whale or as a cat or a non-human

8:18

primate or any individual that

8:20

doesn't have language, really. So

8:23

in order for us to understand it, we

8:25

look for similarities. But I think what we

8:27

miss out on are the differences

8:29

and the fact that they may have a concept that's

8:32

so totally different from ours that we're

8:34

not able to recognize what it is

8:36

that they're processing or how they're representing

8:38

things.

8:41

Jennifer says this isn't just sort of theoretical,

8:44

right? There are real examples of how relying

8:47

on similarities can be deceiving when

8:49

you're studying animals. So

8:51

to take a quick step away from grief,

8:54

she told me about some studies that were done on

8:56

chimpanzees. And these studies were

8:59

trying to figure out if chimps understand when

9:01

they're being looked at, like that someone

9:03

else can see them. So

9:06

in these studies, they sort of had chimps interact

9:08

with researchers. And specifically

9:11

to sort of get a treat from the researchers,

9:14

the chimps had to hold their hands in

9:16

a cup position to kind of beg. So

9:18

it only makes sense to do that if somebody's

9:21

looking at you and they can

9:22

see you. Because they have to see

9:24

you to know to give you a treat. And

9:27

so the researchers ran these tests. And

9:29

at first, the chimps reacted in

9:32

a pretty human-like way. Like

9:34

if the researchers were facing the chimps,

9:36

they did beg. And if a researcher's

9:39

back was turned, the chimps did not beg.

9:41

They were doing what they should be doing

9:44

if they understood that another person could see

9:46

them. And the researchers could have just

9:48

left it there. Like they could have said, all right,

9:50

this behavior looks kind of like

9:53

human behavior. We can just assume it's the

9:55

same and move on.

9:57

Instead, they did further

9:59

tests.

11:49

the

12:00

emotional equivalent of kind of a

12:02

chimp actually having a very different

12:05

way of thinking about eyes. There

12:09

are

12:09

a lot of researchers out there who

12:11

agree that applying the term grief

12:14

to non-human animals could lead

12:16

us astray. But

12:18

there

12:18

are also researchers who do

12:20

not. So after the break, the

12:23

case for saying that animals do

12:25

grieve,

12:26

and the case for asking an

12:29

entirely different question.

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13:38

Good

13:40

grief.

13:43

So do animals grieve?

13:47

Before the break, we heard Jennifer Vonk

13:49

make the case that we just don't know

13:51

enough yet to make a determination

13:53

here. But Jessica

13:55

Pierce, a bioethicist who's written several

13:58

books on animals and death. disagrees

14:01

with Jennifer Vonk's views somewhat. She

14:04

thinks that we can say that

14:06

some non-human animals grieve,

14:08

and even that we should say that. I

14:11

think one thing about using

14:14

the language of grieving and mourning that

14:16

is valuable is that it allows

14:19

us to experience

14:22

empathy for other animals.

14:25

Jessica laid out a scenario for

14:27

me. Basically, she said, imagine a dog

14:29

on a table being given electric shocks.

14:32

A researcher might be taking measurements and

14:34

make notes about this dog, like, the

14:37

dog's body seized,

14:40

and the muscles contracted, and

14:43

levels of the hormone cortisol

14:46

spiked. These are all super

14:48

clinical observations. They're very safe.

14:50

They're objective. But they

14:53

miss the most important thing here. The

14:55

fact is, you hurt the animal. The

14:57

animal experienced

14:58

pain, fear, suffering.

15:02

And Jessica argues that emotional

15:05

pain is kind of the same thing. Like, if we see

15:08

an animal expressing emotional

15:10

pain,

15:11

we should call it like we see it. Like, if a dog

15:14

seems to be grieving its owner's passing,

15:16

spending time on his grave, let's not

15:19

beat around some objective bush. Let's

15:21

just

15:22

call that grief. I

15:24

actually took this back to Jennifer Vonk, who

15:26

said that sort of physical pain is a

15:28

little bit easier to diagnose and read than

15:31

something as complex as emotional pain

15:33

and especially grief. But

15:35

our bioethicist, Jessica, she has

15:38

a larger point to make here. If you're

15:40

a skeptic, you're going to say, well, we

15:42

don't have any scientific proof that

15:45

animals grieve. Therefore,

15:48

we can't talk about it. And to

15:50

me, that's really limiting

15:52

and uninteresting. Because then

15:55

you can't even have a conversation and

15:57

be curious.

15:58

Basically. She says that if

16:01

we are so super duper

16:03

cautious about anthropomorphizing animals

16:05

and sort of avoiding using words like grief,

16:08

we end up slamming shut a bunch

16:11

of doors to further research. We

16:13

limit what we can potentially learn

16:15

about animal grief and

16:18

what we can learn from animals about

16:21

our own grief. There's

16:25

a principle in science

16:27

of parsimony. If something

16:30

evolved in one species,

16:32

it's very unlikely that it

16:35

didn't also evolve in other species.

16:38

And I think

16:39

to say animals

16:41

don't grieve, how could

16:43

it be that those capacities

16:47

evolved only one time

16:49

in only one species? If

16:52

we allow ourselves to assume that things that

16:54

look like grief in other animals are

16:56

grief, Jessica says that that

16:59

lets us ask questions like, what

17:02

does grief look like in different animals? Are

17:05

social animals, animals that live

17:07

in groups, are they more prone

17:09

to grief than non-social animals? I

17:11

don't think we have enough evidence

17:14

yet to say one way or the other, but I think that's

17:16

a really interesting question. We could even

17:18

ask,

17:19

what is the point of grief? Is it

17:21

adaptive? Because animals

17:24

are, in a sense, they're wasting

17:26

time

17:27

when they're grieving. When humans grieve,

17:29

we sometimes don't eat. We sometimes

17:32

isolate or lie around. And

17:34

in some ways, these are not particularly useful

17:37

things to do. You're spending time

17:39

not mating, not

17:42

foraging, not protecting territory,

17:45

not doing the things that you

17:48

need to do for survival.

17:49

So similarly, when

17:51

a goose isolates and doesn't pick a new

17:54

mate, or when a killer whale carries

17:56

around a decomposing calf body, potentially

17:58

exposing herself to power,

17:59

pathogens. What is the adaptive

18:02

value of that

18:04

death-related behavior? What's the adaptive

18:06

value of magpies covering

18:09

a dead body and grass? Is there

18:11

something community-building

18:13

about grief? Is it necessary

18:15

if you want to be a social animal? Could

18:18

we study different versions of animal grief

18:21

and find similarities or differences

18:23

that could teach us about ourselves? Jessica

18:26

says that if we assume animals are grieving,

18:29

it opens up these questions

18:31

to us. These are, I think,

18:33

fascinating questions that we can't answer

18:36

yet. And,

18:37

I mean, I think they

18:39

tell us a lot about

18:42

who animals are and how

18:44

animals think and what animals feel,

18:46

all of which have ethical relevance and

18:50

can tell us about ourselves, too.

18:57

These are two potential ways to think about

19:00

the stories of animals that seem to grieve,

19:02

right? Like, we could say we

19:04

don't know enough to say that these animals

19:06

are grieving, or we could say we

19:09

should assume these animals are grieving and then

19:11

explore further questions about that grief. But

19:16

what if we're actually just way too

19:18

fixated on this whole

19:20

grief question in the first place? If

19:23

we're interested in the broader

19:25

question of how do animals relate

19:27

to death and how do animals understand

19:30

death, how do animals experience death, then

19:32

we need to look past grief. Grief

19:35

is only going to be one specific

19:37

manifestation of animals'

19:40

relationship with death. Susanna Monso

19:42

is an animal ethicist and a philosopher

19:45

who has written about animal reactions

19:48

to death.

19:49

And while she does think that it's possible

19:51

that perhaps some animals do

19:53

grieve,

19:59

Susanne wants researchers

20:02

to be a little less focused on stories

20:04

of animal death that look familiar, stories

20:06

about killer whales in their calves or dogs

20:09

on their master's grave.

20:11

And instead, she wants a little more focus

20:13

on the ways that animals react to death that are wildly

20:17

different from humans. So

20:19

take storks, for example. There's

20:22

this video of a stork on YouTube where

20:24

you see the stork with several stork

20:26

babies in a big flat nest. And

20:30

the stork parent kind of pokes at its chick

20:32

with a long orange beak and

20:35

then grabs one by

20:37

the neck. The baby kind of wriggles in

20:39

protest. And the parent grabs

20:41

the baby away from its siblings,

20:45

pulls it over to the side of the nest and

20:48

drops

20:48

it onto the roof below.

20:53

It's a behavior that happens when somehow

20:56

the mother thinks that there's not enough

20:59

resources to take care of all her offspring.

21:01

She will get rid of one of them. This

21:04

is, hopefully, not the kind of thing

21:06

that we see humans doing.

21:09

In examples like this, and there are a lot of

21:11

them,

21:12

the animals are approaching loss and

21:14

death differently. We just

21:16

don't really know what to do with it. Like, it's just

21:18

very confusing. It's very disturbing to think of a

21:21

mother who just doesn't care about her

21:23

infants dying or her babies dying. But

21:26

I think it's also interesting to try to find out what's

21:29

going on there.

21:30

Susanna wants researchers to study these things

21:33

because they're so odd and unfamiliar.

21:36

And she says that, actually, if we studied these

21:38

kinds of very weird, very unhuman

21:41

reactions to death and loss more closely, we

21:44

might even circle back into

21:46

conversations about grief again, just in

21:48

a really different way.

21:51

She told me about this famous case from

21:53

Germany where a man died, his neighbors

21:56

found him less than an hour later. And

21:58

in the meantime...

21:59

His dog ate him or ate his face,

22:02

rather. This is actually a weirdly common

22:05

phenomenon.

22:06

And Susanna says you could

22:09

potentially make a case that this behavior

22:11

from dogs does demonstrate

22:13

something like grief, for at least

22:15

an expression of the loss of

22:18

an important companion.

22:20

Because if you look at what

22:23

specifically a lot of these

22:25

dogs are eating, What they eat is the face.

22:28

And I think this is telling because

22:30

the face is the emotional center

22:33

of humans. And

22:35

it's what we know dogs pay the

22:37

most attention to. She says that wild,

22:40

undomesticated dogs, they

22:42

will go for a corpse's torso.

22:44

Because that's where you have all the organs that

22:46

are nutrient rich. So when a pet dog

22:49

goes for the face,

22:51

Susanna speculates that maybe,

22:54

who knows, this

22:56

is actually the dog's way

22:58

of emotionally working through losing

23:01

a caretaker. Maybe

23:03

this behavior is grief or

23:05

grief adjacent, even though it

23:07

might not look like a common human

23:10

way to

23:10

express grief. Or

23:13

maybe it's not. But it's examples like this

23:15

that make Susanna want to push

23:17

researchers away from sort of hyper focusing

23:19

on the actions that look familiar

23:22

to us. I am interested in

23:24

what is unknown. Those

23:27

behaviors that are easily explainable

23:31

are just less interesting because it's easier

23:34

to see what's happening. And the ones

23:36

that are super puzzling, why is this dog

23:39

eating his owner's face if in theory

23:42

he loves him?

23:44

That's the one that can read

23:46

to just something we don't know. I

23:52

actually find all three of these researchers

23:54

cases pretty compelling. In

23:56

some ways, they're really all just talking about

23:59

how

23:59

asking or framing a question limits

24:02

the answers you can get. Right?

24:05

Like in Jennifer Vonk's more skeptical argument, she

24:07

says, if you assume animals are

24:10

like humans, you miss

24:12

the ways that they're not like humans,

24:14

potentially. You limit what you learn

24:16

about them. But in Jessica

24:19

Pierce's pushback, she's saying that

24:21

if you're too cautious about kind of drawing

24:24

connections between animals and humans, you

24:26

limit the questions you can ask about animal-human

24:29

relationships. And then

24:31

for Susanna Monso, if

24:33

you're only looking for a very

24:36

human-like version of grief, you're

24:38

missing out on a whole bunch of animal

24:41

weirdness when it comes to death.

24:44

And ultimately, you know, these three

24:46

thinkers actually have a fair amount of overlap

24:49

and even overlapping research

24:50

interests. I

24:53

think it's maybe useful for

24:55

all three of them to disagree a

24:57

little here or to have different approaches

24:59

to animals, because maybe

25:02

the only way to get at some kind

25:04

of an answer to the question of like, what

25:06

is happening inside animal heads

25:09

is to have lots of researchers setting

25:12

different limits for themselves and asking

25:15

very different kinds of questions.

25:25

A special thanks to all three of these researchers

25:27

for their time. And if you want to follow up on

25:29

more of their work, Jessica Pierce

25:31

has a number of books on animals

25:34

and ethics that are out already. But

25:36

her latest, Who's a Good Dog?, will be out

25:38

in September. Susanna Monso

25:41

has a book on how animals

25:43

understand death coming out in 2024. And

25:47

as an example of overlapping research interests,

25:50

Jennifer Vonk is actually running a survey

25:52

right now on how cats react

25:54

to the

25:55

death of their companion animals. And

25:57

she's interested in how pet cats

25:59

react. in fact,

26:00

whether or not those reactions sort of resemble

26:03

humans. So I have included a

26:05

link to that survey in the description

26:07

of the podcast if you are interested in

26:10

participating. This

26:12

episode was produced and reported by

26:14

me, Bird Pinkerton. It was edited

26:16

by Brian Resnick and Meredith Hadnott,

26:19

who also manages our team. We had

26:21

sound design and mixing from Christian

26:23

Ayala, music from Noam

26:25

Hasenfeld, Tien, Lian,

26:28

Victor Fax, and Manningman is

26:31

a great person to go to New

26:33

Jersey with. If you enjoyed the

26:35

show, I'd really, really love it

26:37

if you could leave us a review. I'd also love

26:40

to hear your thoughts directly, so you can

26:42

email us at unexplainable at Vox.com.

26:44

And I promise I read every

26:47

email. Unexplainable is part

26:49

of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we will

26:51

be back next week.

26:58

Thanks for watching.