Essays on non-virtual reality #181

Regarding grief. As of this writing on June 10, 2022, the U.S. has seen 41 additional mass shootings resulting in 49 deaths and 180 injuries since the killing of 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde TX on May 24. According to the Gun Violence Archive, the country has experienced 254 such mass shootings (defined by the GVA as gunfire-caused deaths and/or wounding of four or more people, not including the shooter) since Jan. 1. Perhaps you can almost imagine the contorted hell of sorrow those killers have inflicted on their victims' loved ones. But for me, their grief is too searing, too personal to conceive. And yet, don't all humans, sooner or later, grapple with the question that must face those grieving Uvalde parents each morning: Where, dear Lord, do I find the strength to carry me through this day? How do I manage even the ordinary bits? A bowl of cereal, glance at the paper, head off to work, head home from work, walk the dog … The dog. Do animals grieve, I wonder? Or are we humans alone in mourning the loss of our companions and loved ones? Scientists have long impugned claims that animals experience strong emotions like joy or grief on grounds that it is a serious mistake to anthropomorphize — to ascribe human-like intentions to animal behaviors — when we cannot possibly know the nature of an animal's internal experience. But the dark side of scrupulously avoiding anthropomorphizing animal behavior is the out-of-hand rejection of all evidence suggesting that animals may possess a meaningful interior emotional life. And there's a growing mound of such evidence. In her 2013 book, "How Animals Grieve," College of William and Mary anthropologist Barbara King defined grief as "some visible response to death that goes beyond curiosity or exploration to include altered daily routines plus signs of emotional distress." Note that this definition sidesteps the hairy question of what an animal is feeling inside. "Horses who merely nudge or sniff at the body of a dead companion" she has explained, "can't be said to be grieving. Horses who stand vigil in a hushed circle, for many hours, at the fresh grave of a lost friend may well be grieving. A horse who refuses food and companionship, becomes listless and won't follow normal routines for days when her friend dies? Why wouldn't we see this as grief?" In a 2019 TED talk, King observed that while animals do not grieve exactly as we do — they haven't the creativity to paint, dance or sing their grief — over-avoidance of anthropomorphism "misses the fundamental point that animals can care very deeply for each other." Animals that form strong social bonds such as cetaceans, elephants and non-human primates are proving to be those for whom there exists the strongest evidence for mourning. Consider Tahlequah, a female Orca belonging to a population being studied off the coast of British Columbia. In 2018, she gave birth to a female calf after a year-and-a half gestation period. The calf died within 30 minutes of birth, but Tahlequah carried her daughter's body on her head, retrieving it whenever it slipped off, for 17 days and over 1,000 miles of travel. Elephants, apes, baboons and dolphins have also been observed carrying dead infants, even to the point where they start to decay. And numerous incidents have been reported of elephants repeatedly visiting and touching a recently deceased herd member, and even detaching and carrying away its tusks. In 2018, a donkey named Lena living at an animal shelter in Alberta showed all the signs of bereavement following the demise of her long-time companion, a horse named Jake. The evening after he died, Lena pulled off the tarp covering his body and held vigil all night, circling his body and refusing to leave. After Jake's burial, she stood over his grave for days, pawing at the dirt and braying throughout the night, refusing to leave even for food and water. In 2017, a third grade student, Dante de Kort, set up a motion-sensitive video camera he received for his birthday near the fresh corpse of a peccary (a medium-sized pig-like animal) he found near his home in Prescott, AZ. Over the next 10 days the camera recorded members of the small herd the peccary had belonged to repeatedly visiting and sleeping beside her body, and protecting it from coyotes. When Dante displayed some of his video footage at his school's science fair, it caught the eye of Mariana Altrichter, a biologist from nearby Prescott College. The paper they published together in the prestigious journal, Ethology (with de Kort as lead author), was the first evidence of such behavior for this species. Perhaps our perception of strong emotions underlying the behaviors of our pets and other animals helps explain something of our affection for them. Tragedy and death may have the power to separate us from our loved ones. But empathy connects us.