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Tahlequah is an endangered orca that calls the calm, nutrient-rich waters of the Pacific Northwest home. In 2018, the 26-year-old cetacean made headlines across the world as a symbol of animal grief after she was recorded carrying a dead newborn, Alki, along her nose.
She would continue to do so for just over three weeks.
Cetaceans, such as orcas, are socially complex and cognitively advanced animals. They teach their young how to hunt, and have distinct cultures and dialects. Like Tahlequah, the mammals may even mourn the loss of their family members — at least, that’s how their behavior appears to us humans.
David Stahlman is a professor of psychology at the University of Mary Washington, specializing in animal behavior and comparative cognition. He says that while several species exhibit behaviors that seem ritualistic, such as holding funerals, few engage in characteristic forms of the behavior, meaning consistent, observable actions.
“I think we do a disservice to the science if we were to refer to such behavior as ‘holding a funeral.’ I think, rather, that what we call having a funeral in humans may be largely an extension of typical behavior in particularly social but nonverbal animals,” Stahlman says.
“In social creatures, the welfare of an individual necessarily depends on others within the group. In such cases, an individual's behavior will often be a function of another individual's behavior — one word we use to identify such a case is ‘helping’ behavior,” Stahlman adds.
Read More: Animals Respond to Death in Many Ways. Mourning Might Be One of Them.
How Animals React to Death
Species that evolve complex social behaviors will also evolve complex death-related behavior, he adds. This is because an individual who has died no longer responds to the group’s dynamics or participates in other social functions that benefit their companions. Where once an individual animal might have engaged with a now-deceased animal, they don’t, changing their behavior.
Elephants Visit Their Dead
Elephants, for example, present a “fascinating case” that has been studied perhaps more frequently than any other species in comparative thanatology, or the study of how different species respond to death and dying.
“The most common kinds of behavior you see in them are approach and 'curiosity' regarding the dead, including revisits to the carcass, and an increase in prosocial behavior with respect to other living conspecifics,” Stahlman says.
Wild elephants in Africa and Asia are known to visit the carcasses of their dead calves and to care for dying matriarchs, each showing that the giant mammals exhibit general awareness of and curiosity about death, according to a study in Applied Animal Behaviour Science. As Stahlman describes, animals are known to touch, approach, and investigate carcasses of their dead, revisiting them at all stages of decomposition.
In 2024, researchers writing in the Journal of Threatened Taxa documented elephants in northern India carrying deceased calves by the trunks and legs to a specific site, where they were buried in an upward-facing position. Different herds exhibited different behaviors, but were generally observed trumpeting around the buried calves.
Cetaceans Carrying Their Dead
Cetaceans, such as dolphins and whales, form deep emotional bonds with their families, and their behavior after the death of their calves also indicates that they mourn their loss. On more than one occasion, dolphins and whales have been seen carrying their dead young for hours or even days.
Tahlequah was again seen in December 2024 carrying another dead calf. Marine biologists call this behavior “epimeletic,” a prolonged period of maternal care that shows love, loss, and sorrow — like humans — in other animals.
Chimpanzees Have a Moment of Silence
More than a dozen chimpanzees at a rescue center in Cameroon gathered after the death of their matriarch, Dorothy, in 2008. They gathered in abnormal silence, touched one another, and showed signs of grief.
While researchers such as Stahlman are cautious about attributing human-like behaviors, such events suggest complex emotional processing, according to the International Cognition and Culture Institute.
Other instances of non-human primates grieving their deceased include “carrying the corpse for prolonged periods of time (predominantly mothers carrying dead infants), and inspecting the corpse for signs of life,” wrote a team of researchers in a 2019 study in Primates.
Corvids Crow to the Heavens
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that birds in the corvid family, such as magpies, ravens, and rooks, continue to engage with their fallen comrades.
One study in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B claims that crows will sometimes get it on with their dead counterparts, while another study in the same journal claims that magpies will gather around the deceased for up to 15 minutes at a time, cawing loudly.
Rats Bury Their Dead
Known for their intellect and highly social behavior, rats also appear to grieve the loss of their cage mats. Scientists in a 1981 study in Physiology and Behavior found rats buried the bodies of their dead mates who had been dead for an extended period of time — around 40 hours — but not those who had been dead for less than five.
However, rather than indicating a deep connection among individuals, this behavior may instead reflect efforts to remove a decaying individual who could pose a risk to the health of the living group.
Ants Use Burial Mounds or Make A Meal of the Dead
Similarly, ants bury their dead in compact burial mounds that resemble insect cemeteries. Taking on the role of undertaker again doesn’t reflect a deep connection or emotional intelligence; rather, it's a means of protecting the colony.
Living ants may also eat their dead counterpart, taking advantage of any remaining nutrients.
Do Animals Genuinely Grieve, Or Are We Simply Projecting Our Own Emotions?
Humans talk to their dead at funerals and hold memories of them through tombstones or photographs. Some even might lay out offerings of food or drink.
“When our emotions run high, or our circumstances seem dire, we demand answers from them. This all represents behavior that is what we call ‘missing’ them, in the sense that they were a target for some of our behavior, and now, the repertoire we've built up now ‘misses the target,’ since they can no longer respond to us,” says Stahlman.
“Grief is about a part of ourselves, a part of our own behavior, no longer being functional because someone has died. There's no reason to think that this doesn't also happen in social nonhuman animal species,” Stahlman adds.
In other words, animal funerals may be less about intellect and more about practicality. Then again, who are we to say what other species feel?
Read More: After Death, the Necrobiome Helps Drive the Circle of Life
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from a study published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science: Behavioural reactions of elephants towards a dying and deceased matriarch
- This article references information from a study published in Springer: Elephant behavior toward the dead: A review and insights from field observations
- This article references information from a study published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa: Unearthing calf burials among Asian Elephants Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758 (Mammalia: Proboscidea: Elephantidae) in northern Bengal, India
- This article references information from the International Cognition and Culture Institute: Grieving animals?
- This article references information from a study published in Primates: Do chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) console a bereaved mother?
- This article references information from a study published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Occurrence and variability of tactile interactions between wild American crows and dead conspecifics
- This article references information from a study published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Comparative thanatology, an integrative approach: exploring sensory/cognitive aspects of death recognition in vertebrates and invertebrates
- This article references information from a study published in Physiology and Behavior: Cadaverine and putrescine initiate the burial of dead conspecifics by rats
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