Do Animals Cry and Do They Mourn?

 What's your definition of "crying"?

• The act of expressing emotions through the production of tears?

• The physiological response of your body to counteract dryness in the eyes?

Other animals like rhinos, Western scrub jays, chimpanzees and giraffes may not hold grudges, but they have been observed "mourning" their dead. Research shows that rhinos and scrub jays converge around their dead comrades and issue vocalizations that sound different to their normal communication - similar to the sounds humans make when crying. Giraffes have been spotted waiting for their dead calves to get up for hours, even days on end. One of homo sapiens' closest relatives - chimpanzees - carry their dead offspring with them for days. Chimps have been noticed tenderly grooming their dead, arranging their fur, posturing their limbs and swatting away insects and predators, keeping the corpses safe for days.

Crying and tears have been observed during some of these cases, but not all. Therefore, there is neither clarity nor validity as to whether animals can feel emotion, can cry or can really mourn (according to our definition of these, at least).

In the scientific community, there is a huge rift between the two groups who study the phenomenon of emotional responses, mourning and crying in animals - one group that truly believes that animals can feel and the other group that believes that humans anthropomorphize animals (attribute human emotions to inanimate objects or natural phenomenon) . The debates and the fights for academic supremacy are endless. Currently, there is enough evidence to support both claims -

• Animals can really feel.

• Animals can't really feel - we only think so, because we anthropomorphize them.

Unfortunately, this creates more problems when trying to understand this phenomenon. Additionally, the concern of possible anthropomorphism often scares researchers and scientists from conducting further studies; at the (assumed) risk of discrediting their other discoveries/research. You see, in the scientific community, one of the worst things a scientist can be accused of is anthropomorphism.

So, until we have more evidence, we cannot make definitive calls regarding the emotional capacity or "crying" ability of non-human animals.

 

-NISHA PRAKASH 

(Elephants mourn the death of another elephant - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/elephants-mourning-video-animal-grief)

(Chimps cleaning a dead troop member - https://www.livescience.com/58340-chimpanzee-cleans-corpse-of-son.html)