Re: elephant burials

On Fri, 22 Mar 2024 13:09:45 +0000, b.schafer@ed.ac.uk (Burkhard)
wrote:

Martin Harran wrote:
>

On Mon, 18 Mar 2024 09:47:06 +0000, b.schafer@ed.ac.uk (Burkhard)
wrote:

>

some time ago, Martin, I and a few others discussed burials,
and the way humans think about and relate to dead ancestors.
>
One question in this context was if similar behaviour can
be found in other animals. Here's a short paper on a
recently discovered "elephant graveyard" - carefully argued
I'd say, without overegging the evidence
https://theconversation.com/elephant-calves-have-been-found-buried-what-does-that-mean-225409?
>
and here the academic paper it's based on
https://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/article/view/8826

>

They have not overegged it in regard to the findings suggesting
*burial* but I see nothing to support a jump from that to *grieving*.

>
That's because that was not the subject of that study, for this
you'd need to follow the links that they provide, which gets you
inter alia to Anderson JR. 2016 Comparative thanatology.
Curr. Biol. 26, R543–R556. who discusses
the emotional underpinnings of these activities. The findings
about burials support the analysis in studies like Anderson's

I was reacting to the summary in your first link where they say "If
this conclusion is accurate, these observations could indicate an
understanding of *death and grief* potentially unlike anything else
we've seen in the animal kingdom, revealing yet another way in which
humans are not as unique as previously thought." (My emphasis added.)

I haven't read the full paper but a quick search for grief/grieving
doesn't turn up anything in it so I assume the authors didn't make
this association, it was the person who wrote the article for The
Conversation who claim to exercise "academic rigour, journalistic
flair."