Animal Emotions

Four police horses who had worked the streets together for years retired together to the farm where I board my horse. This happened when Pittsburgh shut down its mounted patrol. The four horses were together in the pasture and would sometimes ride together---it was evident that they still knew how to line up in formation. The horses did not always hang out together in the pasture (it was 2 and 2, not all 4 together). Well, the horse who was most central to the goings-on in the barn, Donald Duck, dropped over dead one day when out to pasture. They covered him with a tarp and a large machine was brought in to lift the 1200 pound horse and bring him to the place where he'd be buried on the farm. As the machine was taking Donny away, one of the surviving police horses who was closest to Donny became agitated, running around the machine and following it across several acres to the gate, and then trying to bust through the gate to follow his friend. Another police horse acted sick, like he was "tying up". This went on the rest of the day. The 3rd horse showed no signs of being cognizant of what happened.

Four police horses who had worked the streets together for years retired together to the farm where I board my horse. This happened when Pittsburgh shut down its mounted patrol. The four horses were together in the pasture and would sometimes ride together---it was evident that they still knew how to line up in formation. The horses did not always hang out together in the pasture (it was 2 and 2, not all 4 together). Well, the horse who was most central to the goings-on in the barn, Donald Duck, dropped over dead one day when out to pasture. They covered him with a tarp and a large machine was brought in to lift the 1200 pound horse and bring him to the place where he'd be buried on the farm. As the machine was taking Donny away, one of the surviving police horses who was closest to Donny became agitated, running around the machine and following it across several acres to the gate, and then trying to bust through the gate to follow his friend. Another police horse acted sick, like he was "tying up". This went on the rest of the day. The 3rd horse showed no signs of being cognizant of what happened.

Domestic and wild animals also grieve for humans that they have lost or been seperated from. Wild animals that have been tamed and bonded with certain individuals have been observed to grieve and not fare well, and even die in short time.

It seems clear that separating a mother from her offspring causes grief (or at least all the behavioral cues that we interpret as grief) in many species. As compassionate beings we should do our best to avoid causing such grief. We should not be paying other people to separate a baby animal from his grieving mother on our behalf.

Yet this practice is routinely practiced by the dairy industry in the production of milk. Calves are ripped away from their lactating mothers at an early age so that the milk can be harvested by machine. The boy calves typically become veal. Although the milk flows, the grief that is experienced must be immense. That's what is done on behalf of the consumers of dairy.

Our willingness to cause such emotional anguish for the sake of inexpensive dairy products is a moral blindspot of our society.

I heard many years ago about a particular ritual of horses lining up one by one to bend over and touch their noses to a dead herd member, as if reverently saying their goodbyes. I wondered about the anecdotes I'd heard, until one day when my Mammoth Donkey Blackjack had to be put down, as he had a burst intestine. I also own his mother, and she was with us at the hospital, as "Pooh Bear" (as I called him) refused to go anywhere without her. We were at a wealthy clinic that caters to Thoroughbreds and other racing horses. They had brought us into the mare and foal barn. When we walked out, I was awestruck at the horses. ALL of them, mares and foals alike, were standing quietly facing the stall they had taken Pooh Bear into, heads hanging down quietly. When Edie, his mama, brayed her gut-wrenchingly painful mourning bray as he passed, the horses outside also joined the vigil, nickering so very quietly to her, and holding their heads low.

As we walked Edie out after allowing her to say her goodbyes to him (which she did just like those stories I'd heard about herd members), one mare stopped Edie. They stood nose to nose for a few moments, and I've often wondered what was "said" between them. I will never forget the look of concern in that mare's eyes. And I will never, ever forget Edie's mourning - no matter how hard I try to forget it. The experience bonded Edie and I even more than we had been before (I felt in many ways that he was my "son"), and it was her that told me in no uncertain terms one day weeks later that it was time for me to go out to the back of the ranch and let the grief out loudly, and to then return and get on with living.

Yes, indeed, horses, donkeys and mules DO grieve - very, very much.

My neighbors aren't the best animal stewards, and when their elderly cat started declining, their neglect was shocking so I took him in. He died a few weeks later knowing he was loved, and his younger (adoptive) brother has spent weeks sitting in the older cat's favorite chair on my back step. He's been listless and extremely needy for affection. When the neighbor remarked that the cat wasn't "any fun any more," I gave him a bracing lecture on how the younger cat missed his brother and needed attention, and he started paying more attention to the cat. The cat is doing much better, but he still spends most of the day on his brother's chair.

While I agree that animals can feel the shock and loss of a loved one very deeply, I don't think those kinds of feelings are the same thing as actual grief.Here's why.

Grieving entails certain types of thought processes that go beyond the feelings of shock and loss that animals can feel:

An awareness of what death is, of our own mortality and the mortality of our loved ones.

Knowing with certainty that we will never see our loved ones again.

Feelings of survivor's guilt.

Mental time travel to past experiences with our loved ones, or to the future to what the world would hypothetically be like without their presence in our lives.

Internal narrative, the ability to ask "Why did this have to happen?" or "What could I have done to keep it from happening?" or "What will I do without them?"

Our brains are designed to assuage our feelings of shock and loss through mental thought processes. The pain of that emotional energy is thus transmuted and transformed. If animals don't have these mental abilities, internal narrative, mental time travel, knowledge of what death and mortality mean, then their experiences of losing a loved one would probably hit them much harder because of the fact that they can't mentally transform or offload those feelings into what we experience as grief.

So while I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that we should pay attention to how animals feel, I think that by labeling those feelings "grief" we're doing them the worst possible favor. We're not accepting them for who they really are, and we're not trying to understand how they actually feel things deeply, on their own level.

I've written about this before on my own blog. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/my-puppy-my-self/201004/misrepresent...

If we want to offer our kindness and compassion to our animal companions, how can we do that honestly and with any real meaning, if we don't love and understand them for who they are? Why do we have to tell ourselves that they're just like us? That's not a kindness, it's a form of selfishness.

Anyway, that's how I see it.

LCK

Anonymous: you are over-intellectualizing the grieving experience, which is predominately emotional in nature. animals don't need deep intellectual understanding of death to experience its effect on their lives, just as human children don't. it's a visceral experience.

Thanks for your comment.

I don't think I'm over-intellectualizing the grieving experience. I'm making a distinction between the visceral feelings of loss that you write about (and that animals can feel) and how those feelings are processed in humans, through mental time travel, introspection, internal narrative, etc. My feeling is that if animals can't process their experiences in such ways their experience of losing a close companion may be even more devstating than it is for us.

And again, my raison d'etre in writing my comment here (and writing my related blog article) is that I believe that by misrepresenting the cognitive abilities of animals we're ensuring that more animals will suffer.

Animal Cognition: shock, loss, pain (simple feelings and emotions)

Human Cognition: shock >grief (simple feelings that we turn into a complex emotion)

Christopher Ryan: You write that true grief requires "an awareness of what death is." But do you have such an awareness? I sure don't.

Hi, Christopher,

If you're over 8 years old and don't have any developmental disabilities, then of course you have an awareness of what death is. You just don't have an awareness of what it's like to die or be dead (presumably).

LCK

When my boyfriend, who lived with me and Choo died suddenly one night, my dog Choo started grieving that day. Everyday after I got home from work, he would go to the window and watch for Papa, all I had to do was say where's Papa and he ran to him. The day he died and was taken away by ambulance, Choo never went to the window again, he quit playing ball,which he did with both of us daily, he just laid there. At bedtime, he refused to go to papa's side of the bed. I don't say the name Papa anymore, but after two months I adopted a girl dog not expecting much, he had never bonded with other dogs in the past. While adopting this dog, the caretaker told me what the vet had said her birthday was 5/15/09, I was surprised cause they had never told me exact birthdays before when I took in strays or when I adopted my cats. It was Papa's birthday. I knew then it was okay and when I took her home, it was instant friendship. Choo came out of his grief, though he still will not sleep on that side of the bed. What he understood I'll never know but he knew something as he was right there when his Papa died.

I am certain that animals are the perfect species to which we, as naive and primitive humans, aspire should we seek enlightenment. Animals do not sin, do not corrupt nature's rules, do not defile themselves or other animals and love uconditionally. Ahhh... they love. Unconditionally. And we consider ourselves superior? No - never. The very suggestions is absolutely absurd!

I lost my beloved dog, Skye at Christmas time to cancer. From diagnosis to her death was about three weeks so it happened quite quickly. Prior to her getting sick, she would play with my other dog and and they'd throw each other about.

Without Skye getting snappy or anything The playing stopped. All the animals became very quiet in the week or so preceding her death. One of the cats took to laying beside her, just licking her paw or her face.

Eventually the day came that I had to take Skye to the vet for the last time. I stayed with her to the end, stroking her head and ears.

On that day, my big dog stopped playing. he just lay there with his head on his paws not interested in anything. He went off his food and was just the picture of misery. It was so bad that I thought I was going to lose my second dog in so many months.

I would say he is only just back to himself now. I have no doubt whatsoever that he was grieving in his own way.

Incidentally, I have a animal related blog and one of the posts talks about the death of my cat, Jerry (http://four-legged-friends.com/cats-and-kittens/my-cat-died-today/). That is the most commented post on the whole blog. A common thread that runs through the comments is guilt but every one of the posters is grieving in the same way as they would grieve for a human member of their family.

It is a hard thing to lose a friend no matter how many legs you have or whether you have fur or feathers.