Grieving Monkey Mourns His Mate

Mourning a fallen group member. (Credit: Bin Yang, James R. Anderson, and Bao-Guo Li/ Current Biology 26) For animal researchers, one of the most essential questions is that of consciousness. How do they view themselves and those around them? Even in humans, consciousness remains a perplexing problem for scientists — made all the more vexing because the answer is locked in our own brains. One way for researchers to gain insight into how other animals view their lives is by observing their behavior when confronted with death. There is a good deal of evidence that various species of animals recognize and react to the deaths of one of their group members. Elephants, gorillas, dolphins and even magpies seem to mourn the loss of those close to them. Getting to view one of these somber rituals is rare, however, as most animals don't grieve for very long, and in the wild, bodies are soon claimed by predators.