grief

Book review – Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

7-minute read
keywords: ethology, philosophy, psychology

The Virginia opossum is one of nature’s glorious weirdos. This North American marsupial will play dead when feeling threatened: she will fall over paralysed, eyes and mouth wide open, turn her tongue blue, drop her body temperature and heart rate, and, for good measure, drool, pee, poop, and excrete a foul-smelling green goo from her anal glands, all at the same time. “Playing” dead rather undersells it. Having just reviewed How Animals Grieve, this is the second of a two-part review exploring how animals experience and understand death, a topic studied by comparative thanatology. This young discipline sits somewhere at the intersection of ethology and comparative psychology, though associate professor Susana Monsó is instead a philosopher. With Playing Possum, she has written an exceedingly interesting book that is as accessible to a general audience as it is relevant to specialists. In the process, she convincingly argues that an understanding of death is likely very widespread in nature, but also that comparative thanatology has a whole lot of growing up to do.

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Book review – How Animals Grieve

8-minute read
keywords: ethology

Death, and its attendant grief, is on that infamous shortlist of two things that are sure in life. But are humans alone in understanding death? To prepare for reviewing Susana Monsó’s new book Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death, I reach back in time to 2013 to a highly relevant book that has been sitting on my shelf unread for too long. In How Animals Grieve, anthropologist Barbara J. King mines a compelling vein of anecdotes that strongly suggest this emotion is not uniquely human. This, then, is the first of a two-part review exploring how our evolutionary next of kin experience and understand death.

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Book review – Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel

7-minute read

Recognising that animals are intelligent beings with inner lives, emotions—even personalities—has a troubled place in the history of ethology, the study of animal behaviour. For most pet owners, these things will seem self-evident, but ethologists have long been hostile to the idea of anthropomorphising animals by attributing human characteristics to them. The tide is turning, though, and on the back of decades-long careers, scientists such as Frans de Waal, Marc Bekoff, and Carl Safina have become well-known public voices breaking down this outdated taboo. In preparation of reviewing Safina’s new book Becoming Wild, I decided I should first read his bestseller Beyond Words. I have to issue an apology here: courtesy of the publisher Henry Holt I have had a review copy of this book for several years that gathered dust until now. And that was entirely my loss, as Beyond Words turned out to be a beautiful, moving book.

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Book review – Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Teach Us about Ourselves

Do animals experience joy, grief, or shame? Most people will be quick to attribute all sorts of emotions to pets and other animals. But many biologists remain uncomfortable with this, well, touchy-feely subject. As scientists, we are trained to be objective, cool, and detached when making observations. Anthropomorphism – the attribution of human traits to animals – has traditionally been a big no-no. But the tide is turning, and well-known Dutch-American primatologist Frans de Waal is here to help it along. Mama’s Last Hug is a smart, opinionated, and insightful book arguing we have long overestimated humans and underestimated animals.

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