Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

by Susana Monsó

a new discipline was born: comparative thanatology, which aims to study how animals react to individuals who are dead or close to dying, the physiological processes that underlie their reactions, and what these behaviors tell us about the minds of animals.

The smell of putrescine thus works as an alarm signal and automatically activates our fight or flight mechanisms. This is due not only to the fact that corpses are a source of pathogens, but also to the fact that a carcass in one’s surroundings is an indication of a potential threat to our physical integrity.

Our face is the part of our bodies that our canine friends pay the most attention to, for it is key to understanding our emotions and communicating with us.7 Consequently, it is to be expected that Firuláis, upon seeing his caretaker lying still after the gunshot, began to try to get a reaction from him by nudging his face with his snout. In the absence of a response, and in order to calm himself down or out of sheer frustration, he might have started licking, then nibbling, and once blood was drawn the temptation to take a bite might have been overwhelming.8 That is, it’s likely that Firuláis’s love for his keeper and his anguish upon his lack of response were at the root of his behavior.

Animals generate distinct expectations about an entity depending on whether they take her to be animate or inanimate, and they mistrust those entities that violate these expectations. If you live with a dog, you may have noticed that they find the vacuum cleaner and the hairdryer to be absolutely terrifying. This is because these are objects that violate their expectations. By classifying them as inanimate objects, our pets don’t expect them to generate the noise and movement that they do. That’s why they find them so unsettling.

Both Kathy and Peter ended their own lives by voluntarily stopping breathing, according to the witnesses. In contrast to our own case, for dolphins breathing is not a reflex, but each inhalation is instead the result of a voluntary decision, which is why they have at their disposal a fairly easy means to end their own lives.

surviving infancy if you’re a wild animal is a heroic deed, and infanticide is partly to blame for this, since it’s one of the most common causes of death among young animals of many species.

We are a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe. The truth is that being human is being animal. MELANIE CHALLENGER, HOW TO BE ANIMAL

Humans hide death as much as they can. On the contrary, for animals in the wild, this is a day-to-day reality that can’t be avoided. Despite lacking an explicit notion of the inevitability and unpredictability of death, they live out these notions much more than we do.

Despite the unquestionable differences between our species and the rest, we have also seen that there are many continuities. We’re not the only animal who understands death, nor are we the only one who grieves, nor the only one who kills on purpose or for fun.