15 October 2023 , 13:00
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A heart-rending video of elephants staging a "funeral" for one of their young has gone viral, which sparked an outpouring of emotion on social media.
The stunning footage was posted to Twitter by Parveen Kaswan, a forest ranger in the Indian Foreign Service. It shows an adult Indian elephant emerging from a wooded area onto a road, carrying the lifeless body of a deceased infant with its trunk. It rests the body down, then appears to guard it as it waits for other members of the herd to follow. Walking in a line - not dissimilar to a funeral procession - both young and mature elephants gather around the carcass.
With the group in tow, the body is carried off into the forest as passersby look on. It provoked outburst of emotion on the social media site, after it was re-tweeted more than 5,000 times, and received just short of 12,000 'likes'. Devika commented: "This is heart rending. There's a lot that humans can learn from animals."
Sumita Bhatt added: "Omg!!! First time I hv seen such video.. Really very touching" Mohan Alembath said it was a "very touching and emotionally disturbing video", observing that "elephants' capacity for complex emotions like grief is truly remarkable". While scientists warn against interpreting such displays as being motivated by "grief", elephants are one of a number of species who have been observed to mourn their dead.
An elephant - which may or may not be related to the deceased - is seen carrying its body across a road in India (Twitter/@ParveenKaswan)Elephants have been known to take special interest in the bones of their deceased, according to the Smithsonian magazine, and have been seen holding "funerals". During these memorials, the animals have been known to repeatedly pass the deceased fellow herd member - even sometimes smelling and touching the dead body.
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Last year, images were circulated of a female killer whale carrying the body of her deceased calf on her back for more than two weeks through Canadian waters before releasing it. Chimpanzees have also been repeatedly observed engaging in similar pratices. In one case, a small group of captive chimpanzees were spotted checking the body of a herd-mate for signs of life, and cleaned bits of straw from her fur. They refused to go to the place where she had died for several days afterwards.
Other elephants arrive, before the group moves on into the forest together (Twitter/@ParveenKaswan)In 2017, a team of primate researchers in Zambia filmed a mother using a piece of dried grass to clean debris from the teeth of her deceased son. The implication, according to the scientists involved, is that chimpanzees continue to feel social bonds, even after death, and feel some sensitivity toward dead bodies.
Magpies have been observed burying their dead under twigs of grass. In one of the most fascinating recent examples, an eight-year-old boy caught video footage of peccaries, a species of wild pig-like animal found in parts of the United States, observing mourning rituals. The peccaries visited the dead body repeatedly, nuzzling it and biting at it, as well as sleeping next to it.