How Animals Grieve (26 page)

And here come echoes of my joy-and-sadness theme again: For animal lovers, the knowledge weighs heavy that animals in the wild, housed on farms or in sanctuaries or zoos, or alongside us in our homes, may struggle or may have struggled in various ways because of human neglect or abuse. Even here, though, there’s room for joy: We may bring about a shift, a sea change from treating animals as
somethings
to treating them as
someones
—just as Farm Sanctuary teaches us.

I would like to conclude on a personal note. In 2005, a column called “Always Go to the Funeral” was broadcast by NPR as part of its “This I Believe” essay project. In it, Deirdre Sullivan described her parents’ insistence that she, as a shy teenager, attend the funeral of a grade-school teacher. Trying to squeeze out a few words of condolence to the teacher’s family, the young Sullivan felt mortified. Only later did she appreciate being raised to understand that some acts mean so much to others that your own discomfort, or inconvenience, matters little. She concludes with this passage:

On
a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I’ve ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

Also on an April night, my own father died. It was 1985, and he had lived to be sixty. First in the Navy during World War II, later as a fireman and then for decades as a New Jersey state policeman who fought organized crime, he served others. During his funeral, the gunfire salutes offered by his former state police colleagues brought tears to my eyes. What is rooted most firmly in my heart since that day isn’t the official ceremony, though. It is the gathering together of many people who interrupted their spring day to sit with us, to honor my father with their words, and to transfer their strength to my mother and me.

It’s no accident, I think, that I chose to write a book about grief when I entered my mid-fifties. It’s true that in doing research for earlier works, I kept bumping up against bits and pieces of evidence for animals’ emotional responses to death. In that sense, this book grew naturally from seeds planted in the previous two. Yet there’s more going on. I am part of the great wave of baby boomers who now approach—or have reached—the retirement years. My only child is in college. My mother is in assisted living. With a narrow escape after emergency surgery at the age of eighty-four, she finds herself needing more complicated care than ever before. Now eighty-six, she may live as long as her own mother, to one hundred, or she may be gone sooner. My mother’s life is intertwined with mine in a way it hasn’t been before—except, of course, when I was very young. When I talk with friends around my age, our conversation veers often into elderly-parent territory. We share the worry, exhaustion, and yes, the satisfaction too, of caring in various ways for our mothers and fathers.

As I negotiate details of my mother’s stays in hospitals, nursing-home rehabilitation centers, and her assisted-living residence, I feel profound love for her mixed with an anticipatory grief. Frequently, I learn
that
someone close to me is in the grip of fully realized grief: One friend’s mother dies shortly before her ninetieth birthday, after a long struggle with cancer. Another’s father, in his eighties, is gone after a short period of intense physical decline; my friend is sure he willed himself to die, helped along by his refusal to eat. Another friend’s son dies right after Christmas in a terrible car wreck at age seventeen. For that mother, I feel wild sorrow, and know of no way to offer comfort. All I do know is to share her love for her son, which survives him in abundance.

It won’t ease our deepest grief to know that animals love and grieve too. But when our mourning becomes a little less raw, or is so far only anticipated, may it bring genuine comfort to know how much we share with other animals? I find hope and solace in the stories in these pages. May you find hope and solace in them as well.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My first and heartfelt thanks go to the people who have met or communicated directly with me for this book about the animals they live with, or once lived with: Karen and Ron Flowe, Nuala Galbari, Janelle Helling, Charles Hogg, Connie Hoskinson, David Justis, Melissa Kohout, Jeane Kraines, Michelle Neely, Mary Stapleton, and Lynda and Rich Ulrich.

I am grateful also to those who wrote comments about their experiences with animal grief in response to my posts at NPR.org’s
13.7 Cosmos & Culture
blog. To my
13.7
editor, Wright Bryan, thanks for teaching me so much.

To the scientists and zoo staff members who generously responded to my questions and shared material with me, I owe sincere thanks: Karen Bales, Tyler Barry, Marc Bekoff, Melanie Bond, Ryan Burke, Dorothy Cheney, Jane Desmond, Anne Engh, Sian Evans, Peter Fashing, Diane Fernandes, Roseann Giambro, Liran Samuni, Karen Wager-Smith, and Larry Young.

My admiration as well as my gratitude goes to the staff of the Elephant Sanctuary–Tennessee, the Farm Sanctuary, and the House Rabbit Society, who helped me with material about animal mourning and who help thousands of animals in need.

Through its research leave program, the College of William and Mary made possible the period of intense reading and writing from which this book emerged. To provost Michael Halleran, director of research communications Joseph McClain, and my colleague anthropologist Danielle Moretti-Langoltz, special primate gestures full of thanks.

I
have fond memories of sitting around a table in the Levine-Greenberg literary agency in Manhattan years ago, brainstorming about this book (as yet only an idea) with Jim Levine and Lindsay Edgecombe. Lindsay and Jim believed in the ideas behind the words “how animals grieve” and helped tremendously in shaping the book as it came to fruition.

As the book went to press, Jill Kneerim of the Kneerim-Williams Agency provided superb guidance and support, and turned me firmly toward my future of writing about animal emotion.

All along, the experience of working with people at the University of Chicago Press has been an intellectual treat and a personal delight. Christie Henry always says the
best
thing at the
best
time and, through her editorial insights, has made this a better book in at least ten different ways. Also at the Press, Levi Stahl, Joel Score, and Amy Krynak have been so good to me, and to the book too, that I send them a sincere thank you.

To Stuart Shanker, how adequately to acknowledge many years of shared work projects, mutual support, and exchanged tales of children, chickens, and cats? Please know your friendship matters so much, every day.

I’ve succumbed to convention in mentioning those closest to my heart last. In one sense, it’s a small family, consisting of my husband Charles Hogg, my daughter Sarah Hogg, and my mother Elizabeth King. To my mother, thank you for everything you have given me, including a ton of books from the earliest years onward, and a love of reading. To my daughter, I will always cherish our serious and silly talks about animals (including Sir Lancelot!), about writing, and about standing up for what (and who) we care about. To my husband, I can only say, you’re amazing to me. I’ve loved you since that first fateful fall of 1989, but I love you more by the day as I see with new eyes the depth of your commitment to animals.

And yet, those are just the
Homo sapiens
! Our family circle is larger. To all the animals who have loved me back over the years (cats, dogs, rabbits) and to all the others who have regarded me with a mild friendliness or outright indifference but who are still gorgeous and still loved (monkeys, apes, bison, frogs, birds, and more), trying to enter your emotional worlds is a joy and a responsibility and I hope I’ve gotten some important parts right.

READINGS
AND VISUAL RESOURCES

PROLOGUE

Bekoff, Marc. “Animal Love: Hot-Blooded Elephants, Guppy Love, and Love Dogs.”
Psychology Today
blog, November 2009.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/200911/animal-love-hot-blooded-elephants-guppy-love-and-love-dogs.

Kessler, Brad.
Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese
. New York: Scribner, 2009. Quoted material, p. 154.

Krulwich, Robert. “
‘Hey I’m Dead!’ The Story of the Very Lively Ant.” National Public Radio, April 1, 2009.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102601823.

Potts, Annie
. Chicken
. London: Reaktion Books, 2012.

Rosenblatt, Roger
. Kayak Morning
. New York: Ecco, 2012. Quoted material, p. 49.

CHAPTER ONE

Coren, Stanley. “How Dogs Respond to Death.” With a sidebar by Colleen Safford.
Modern Dog
, Winter 2010/2011, 60–65. Quoted material, p. 62.

Harlow, Harry F., and Stephen J. Suomi. “Social Recovery by Isolation-Reared Monkeys.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
68 (1971): 1534–38. Quoted material, p. 1534.
http://www.pnas.org/content/68/7/1534.full.pdf.

King, Barbara J. “Do Animals Grieve?”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/10/20/141452847/do-animals-grieve.

Renard, Jules.
Nature Stories
. Translated by Douglas Parmee. Illustrated by Pierre Bonnard. New York: New York Review of Books, 2011. Quoted material, p. 39.

CHAPTER TWO

Coren, Stanley. “How Dogs Respond to Death.” With a sidebar by Colleen Safford.
Modern Dog
, Winter 2010/2011, pp. 60–65.

Dosa,
David.
Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat
. New York: Hyperion, 2010.

Hare, Brian, and Michael Tomasello. “Human-Like Social Skills in Dogs?”
Trends in Cognitive Science
, 2005.
http://email.eva.mpg.de/÷tomas/pdf/Hare_Tomasello05.pdf.

King, Barbara J.
Being with Animals.
New York: Doubleday, 2010.

Zimmer, Carl. “Friends with Benefits.”
Time
, February 20, 2012, 34–39. Quoted material, p. 39. (For responses by Patricia McConnell, see
http://www.patriciamcconnell.com/theotherendoftheleash/tag/carl-zimmer.)

VIDEO Ceremony to honor the dog Hachiko, Tokyo, April 8, 2009. One can see the statue of Hachi in the opening frames. (In Japanese.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffB6IEFsD9A.

VIDEO Heroic dog rescue on the highway in Chile.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28148352/ns/today-today_pets_and_animals/t/little-hope-chiles-highway-hero-dog/.

PHOTO Hawkeye the dog at Jon Tumilson’s casket.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44271018/ns/today-today_pets_and_animals/t/dog-mourns-casket-fallen-navy-seal/.

CHAPTER THREE

Farm Sanctuary, “Someone, Not Something: Farm Animal Behavior, Emotion, and Intelligence.”
http://farmsanctuary.wpengine.com/learn/someone-not-something/.

Hatkoff, Amy.
The Inner World of Farm Animals
. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009. Quoted material, p. 84.

Marcella, Kenneth L. “Do Horses Grieve?”
Thoroughbred Times
, October 2, 2006.
http://www.thoroughbredtimes.com/horse-health/2006/october/02/do-horses-grieve.aspx.

CHAPTER FOUR

Archer, John.
The Nature of Grief: The Evolution and Psychology of Reactions to Loss
. New York: Routledge, 1999.

House Rabbit Society. “Pet Loss Support for Your Rabbit.”
http://www.rabbit.org/journal/2-1/loss-support.html.

Wager-Smith, Karen, and Athina Markou. “Depression: A Repair Response to Stress-Induced Neuronal Microdamage That Can Grade into a Chronic Neuroinflammatory Condition.”
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
35 (2011): 742–64.

CHAPTER FIVE

Bibi, Faysal, Brian Kraatz, Nathan Craig, Mark Beech, Mathieu Schuster, and Andrew Hill. “Early Evidence for Complex Social Structure in
Proboscidea
from a Late Miocene Trackway Site in the United Arab Emirates.”
Biology Letters
(2012). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.1185.

Douglas-
Hamilton, Iain, Shivani Bhalla, George Wittemyer, and Fritz Vollrath. “Behavioural Reactions of Elephants towards a Dying and Deceased Matriarch.”
Applied Animal Behaviour Science
100 (2006):87–102.

Elephant Sanctuary. “Tina.”
http://www.elephants.com/tina/Tina_inMemory.php.

Gill, Victoria. “Ancient Tracks Are Elephant Herd.” BBC, February 25, 2012.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17102135.

McComb, Karen, Lucy Baker, and Cynthia Moss. “African Elephants Show High Levels of Interest in the Skulls and Ivory of Their Own Species.”
Biology Letters
2 (2005): 2–26.

Moss, Cynthia.
Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family.
New York: William Morrow, 1988. Quoted material, p. 270.

VIDEO Amboseli elephants’ response to a matriarch’s bones:
http://www.andrews-elephants.com/elephant-emotions-grieving.html.

CHAPTER SIX

Bosch, Oliver J., Hemanth P. Nair, Todd H. Ahern, Inga D. Neumann, and Larry J. Young. “The CRF System Mediates Increased Passive Stress-Coping Behavior Following the Loss of a Bonded Partner in a Monogamous Rodent.”
Neuropsycho-pharmacology
34(2009): 1406–15.