Do animals have an understanding of the concept of death?

A chimpanzee named Muni had just been brought to a zoo in the Netherlands when she lost her child. The zookeepers did not know that she was pregnant. Zoe Goldsborough, a student who spent months studying and recording social interaction among chimpanzees, did not know this either.

One cold winter morning, Goldsborough saw Mooney sitting alone on a tree trunk in the center of the compound, holding something in her arms. It wasn’t unusual for Muni to be alone, as she had trouble bonding with the zoo’s 14 other chimpanzees. But when Goldsborough approached him, he knew something was wrong. Muni was holding a baby in her arms and the baby was not moving.

Goldsborough rushed to the room where the zookeepers were preparing food for the chimpanzees and told them what he had seen. At first, they didn’t believe Goldsboro’s words and said that Mooney was probably playing some tricks. But after the guards saw the baby with their own eyes, they entered the compound and tried to take it from Muni. Mooney wouldn’t let go and the guards decided to wait for a while and then try again.

At this moment, another female chimpanzee named Toshi was roaming around Muni. Toshi was one of Goldsboro’s favorite chimps. A few years ago, he became world-famous for a planned attack on a drone that was filming chimpanzees. Toshi had experienced a miscarriage long before. Maybe for Toshi, seeing Muni and her baby was a reminder of that old memory or similar feelings. Over the next two days, she stayed close to Mooney, while Mooney still held her baby’s body in her arms.

Finally, in a struggle with the guards, the body falls from Mooney’s hands, Toshi takes it and refuses to give it back. Muni was very angry. The guards put Toshi in a separate room and Muni angrily bangs on the door. Goldsborough was not sure about the cause of this behavior. Mooney seemed to be under the influence of intense maternal attachment, and Toshi was perhaps reacting to a repetition of feelings she had experienced in the past.

It is unclear whether any of the chimps actually understood what had happened to the child. Maybe they mistakenly thought the child would come back to life. Even though chimpanzees are our closest relatives in the tree of life and one of the most well-studied animals, we still cannot interpret their behavior with certainty.

We humans have even extended our finitude to the universe itself. Scientists tell us that trillions of years from now, after the last galaxies have collapsed and the black holes have vaporized bit by bit, the entire universe will be destroyed.

As humans, our complex ideas about death are not passed on to future generations through our genes. They are formed in people’s minds over time and gradually accumulate in our culture. Human children usually learn between the ages of 4 and 7 that death is not temporary or irreversible, and if they lose a family member or pet, they may understand this a little earlier.

In a new book, ” Pretending to Die: How Animals Understand Death, ” Spanish philosopher Susana Monceau argues that many other animals probably understand the same simple concept of death (i.e., loss of agency). Of course, without access to their minds, we cannot be sure about this.

Mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and insects are all aware of agency in the natural world. They monitor their environments for movement and differentiate between stationary objects and things that move in some way to achieve their goal. Some of them behave in ways that show they understand that other animals may lose this ability forever. But we don’t know whether these behaviors are caused by the understanding of death or simply by instinct.

Pay attention to the termites. At the June meeting in Kyoto, an entomologist from Louisiana State University presented a paper on carcass management methods in eastern groundhogs. More than a million of these insects may congregate in nested subterranean colonies tens of meters wide. When worker ants encounter a dead mate in one of the colony’s tunnels, they react differently depending on the condition of the corpse. When the corpse is fresh, they eat it; But they bury old and rotten bodies. Other social insects that live in similar environments behave in similar ways. Bees remove dead bodies from the hive, but these behaviors do not appear to be caused by an understanding of the concept of death.

Termite corpses produce oleic acid, which apparently stimulates burial behavior. When the American biologist Edward Wilson smeared a live ant with this substance, the members of the colony immediately assumed him dead and took him out of the colony, even as he moved his legs in protest.

Andre Gonsalvez, a comparative morologist at Kyoto University, cautions against paying too much attention to this story. According to him, the elephants were found in the pit; This means that they could have fallen inside them, and leaves and dirt could have accidentally piled up on the bodies as their families tried to pull them out.

Monceau reminds his readers that animals live in a violent and bloody world where predators attack in the dark of night or appear from unseen heights with sharp claws.

The violent environment of animal life provides rich conditions for understanding death. Monceau gives the example of a young stag watching a battle between two older stags for power. After their antlers clash several times and the weaker rival fails to rise, the young deer begins to understand the basics of death. If he does not remember this lesson, he will probably have many opportunities to learn it again.

Among chimpanzees, acts of brutal violence, including murder, indicate a deeper understanding of death. Chimpanzees, like wolves and lions (and humans), sometimes cooperate to kill rival group members. These attacks may be planned in advance. Two or three males enter an area occupied by another group. They move quickly and cautiously, and even when they pass food sources, they don’t stop to eat. They choose single targets and coordinate their attacks so that they don’t get hurt themselves. In some cases, the attacking chimpanzees will continue their attacks even after the victim has surrendered, only stopping when the victim stops breathing.

Obviously, even if chimpanzees understand the concept of death, it is not as complex for them as it is for us. Humans know what death is and they know that one day it will come to them.

James Anderson, professor emeritus of Kyoto University and known as the father of comparative mortology, says chimpanzees feel about their own death in a different way than we humans do. Despite thousands of hours of observation, he says, no one has ever seen a chimpanzee attempt suicide. According to Anderson, only an animal that knows it can die tries to bring about its own death. He says that the lack of reliable reports of suicidal behavior in chimpanzees or any other animal suggests that the existential burden of death is uniquely ours.

Of course, Anderson, as well as other scientists specializing in the field of comparative mortality, still cannot provide the final answer. They can tell us that chimpanzees understand death better than termites, but the rest is unknown and may never be revealed. We can only hope that as we continue to study chimpanzees, we will see new behaviors from them that will reveal more of their inner world.

The story of Muni and her baby may be one of these cases. After the zookeepers left Toshi alone, they decided to calm things down. They kept him away from others until the next day. Meanwhile, everything had changed for Mooney.

Muni used to have trouble interacting with other chimps and used to pull the hair of other female chimps tightly during grooming. He often sat too close to them and stared at them inappropriately. The day Toshi returned to the group, Mooney was surrounded by other chimpanzees. When he saw Toshi, he quickly got up and slapped him.

Toshi did not react, and over the next 30 days, she and the other chimps interacted more with Moony. No other chimpanzee experienced such an increase in attention, and almost all chimpanzees participated in this display of attention. They hugged Moony and petted her more, but they didn’t share the attention equally. Some took care of Muni more than others and Toshi took care of him most of all. It seemed that an important topic had been exchanged between these two chimpanzees. A few months later, things in the compound were largely back to normal. Muni was no longer being petted and the males started harassing her again. But Toshi and Muni often sat together and this close relationship continues to this day.

Mammoth and dodo return to nature: will de-extinction save the environment?

Ben Lam, co-founder and CEO of Classel, says recent advances have brought scientists closer to recovering extinct species than people realize. Referring to other de-extinction projects of the Klaasel company, he added: “The company plans to produce the first mammoth-like calves by 2028, and it is very likely that we will see the recovery of another species before then.”

Woolly mammoths lived in the Arctic between 300,000 and 10,000 years ago. To produce mammoth calves, Klassel scientists will first identify the genes encoding the woolly mammoth’s iconic physical characteristics, such as woolly hair, curved tusks, fat deposits and a dome-shaped skull. Then, they will insert these genes into the genome of Asian elephants ( Elephas maximus ), which are genetically more similar to mammoths than other species.

Ronald Gaudry, an ecologist and director of the Tauros Foundation, an offshoot of the Restoring Europe Wilderness project, which is looking for a replacement for the extinct ago ( Bos primigenius ), says de-extinction aims to fill ecological niches left empty since the original species disappeared. . Niagaos were wild ancestors of domestic cattle ( Bos taurus ) that once lived in North Africa, Asia, and almost all of Europe. They probably played a vital role in maintaining the animal and plant biodiversity of ecosystems by grazing and trampling the soil.

Gaudry and his colleagues are now restoring the Niagaos through a method called reintroduction. This practice does not require genetic engineering. Niagaos were exterminated by humans in 1627, but their DNA is still present in the ancient cattle breeds of southern Europe. By selecting and breeding cows with physical, behavioral, and genetic characteristics similar to Niagaos, ecologists are moving towards the revival of this extinct species. “In every generation, we see rapid and dramatic improvements,” Gaudry says.

The Pleistocene era was the heyday of woolly mammoths. They maintained arctic grasslands by trampling snow, preventing the growth of trees and shrubs, and dispersing nutrients over long distances through feces. Without mammoths and other giant herbivores that are now extinct, such as the Mammoth Steppe, the area has become a waterlogged landscape of tundra, bogs, scrub, and forests. Research shows that the new landscape stores less carbon than grasslands.

Permafrost also melts faster, releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Some scientists suggest that reintroducing herbivores to the Arctic will help restore ecosystems, increase carbon storage capacity, and mitigate climate change.

However the de-extinct species can fulfill their ecological role properly only if they survive in nature and the population grows sufficiently. Gaudry says that achieving this in the recovery of mammoths is a huge and outstanding task.

Researchers recently estimated that the vast area of ​​Alaska’s North Slope could be a good host for 48,000 woolly mammoths.

Vincent Lynch , an evolutionary biologist and assistant professor at the University of Buffalo, says mammoths’ ecological role may also include increasing the albedo effect (the reflection of light by snow into space and cooling the Earth). But for mammoths to do their job properly, they probably need to be restored across the Arctic.

“You can’t just put mammoths in Alaska and solve the permafrost problem,” Lynch adds. You have to spread them everywhere.”

Lynch believes that there would need to be hundreds of thousands of mammoths on Earth to see a significant impact on climate, and this could threaten living and endangered species.

The Asian and African elephants that Klaasel plans to use as hosts for raising mammoth calves are themselves endangered. An elephant carrying a mammoth fetus cannot give birth to its own children. In this way, this issue will reduce the population of elephants.

Another option is to place embryos in artificial wombs. But the technology is still not fully developed, Lynch says: “Imagine having hundreds or thousands of artificial wombs in warehouses producing genetically engineered mammoths; It’s like a horror and anti-utopian story.”

In addition to technical challenges, the restoration of extinct species can have serious consequences. One of the problems is that the regenerated animals may be sick because their genetic diversity is very limited.

To maintain a population, a sufficient number of organisms that are genetically different are needed so that the species is resistant to disease and harmful mutations.

Also, if large-scale mammoth recovery goes awry, who will be responsible? “Biomes have adapted to the absence of mammoths since they went extinct,” Lynch says. What happens if something bad happens?”

Other experts also share such concerns. “To see an impact, there needs to be a large number of animals,” says Sophie Monzara, an ecologist and director of the European Nature Restoration Projects.

While proponents of restoring extinct species cite this as a valuable way to protect the environment, critics argue that investing in conservation programs for existing species is far more effective. Classel has raised at least $225 million so far for its endangered species recovery programs, with a portion of that money going toward conservation and genetics research around the world.

“Instead of using this money to bring back three extinct species with unknown environmental impacts, these funds could be used to save about 100 species that currently face an uncertain future,” says Schmitz.

Lynch believes that the best way to support and protect the environment is to invest in existing and proven projects. “Reviving many extinct species with significant environmental impact is likely to be impossible, raising questions about the purpose of de-extinction companies like Klaasel,” he says.

Adam Cyril, a researcher in cultural, historical, and environmental geography at the University of Nottingham, believes that species recovery is unlikely to help solve environmental crises. “The purpose of this project is literally to provide a pet for billionaires,” he says.

In response to Cyril’s criticism, Lam says, “Any species recovery goal requires new technology and techniques that will also benefit closely related species.” He also argues that “technological innovations developed and financed by private companies are very important in this regard.”

Still, aside from Classel’s environmental impact, the return on such a huge investment would be huge, Lynch says. He adds: “I have no doubt that this project will succeed, they will make a lot of money if it succeeds.”

But in the end, says Schmitz, the harms and losses of de-extinction to other people and to nature will far outweigh the benefits.

As a result, the revival of extinct species is technically possible, and with recent advances, it is one step closer to becoming a reality. However, there are serious ethical, environmental, and scientific questions that must be addressed before de-extinction. Critical researchers say that instead of focusing on the recovery of lost species, we should focus on preserving and supporting the species that are still alive and their habitats.