How Animals Grieve

by Barbara J. King

  It’s common enough for a zoo elephant, gorilla, or chimpanzee to discover one day that a close friend of many years is simply . . . gone. The friend may have been crated up and transported to another zoo, with no way for caretakers to explain that fact. And this isn’t so different a situation from what may unfold in our own homes, when a pet dies at the vet’s office and a friend is left back home. Even in a sanctuary setting, it takes an insightful observer to distinguish between an elephant who pines for playful companionship in the immediate moment and an elephant who feels grief. In Tarra’s case, what started out as in-the-moment sadness seems to have blossomed into full-on mourning. Her caretakers reported that Tarra continued to visit Bella’s grave on and off for weeks after the dog’s death.

  The depth of feeling between Tarra and Bella helps explain why, in the last few years, cross-species animal friendship has become a wildly popular topic. Tarra and Bella played a role in this phenomenon when video clips of their friendly interactions went viral on the Internet. Then in 2011, Jennifer Holland of the National Geographic Society published Unlikely Friendships, and it hit the best-seller lists. Friendships between a sled dog and a polar bear, a snake and a hamster, and forty-five other pairs—including Tarra and Bella—are explored in her book. Holland describes Tarra’s earlier vigil when Bella was ill; in seeming distress, Tarra waited for many days outside the house where Bella was being nursed back to health. When the two were finally reunited, each expressed joy according to its species: Bella wiggled her whole body and rolled on the ground; Tarra trumpeted and stroked Bella with her trunk.

  Sometimes, what gets labeled as a cross-species friendship is more accurately described as a short-term positive association. Think of it this way: You are a guest at a friend’s house for several days, and enjoy backyard romps with your friend’s dog. You initiate the first bout by throwing a Frisbee, but later, the dog invites you to play by bringing you a throw toy; from his body language, you know he’s having fun. Each of you is a willing partner in a series of positive interactions, a kind of temporary alliance that fits the circumstances of the moment. But did you and the dog forge a friendship? Only if the criteria for defining a friendship are satisfied by fairly fleeting interactions.

  But should lengthy association be a requirement for friendship? In Unlikely Friendships, Holland tells of a sled dog and a polar bear in the northern Canadian town of Churchill. One day a large bear approached an open corral where sled dogs were chained. Common in the area, wild bears sometimes kill sled dogs. Although most of the dogs responded anxiously, one did not. Photographer Norbert Rosing watched as the bear rolled over and stretched out a paw toward that dog. Cautious at first, the dog began to relax, and respond to the bear’s play invitation. At one point, the dog cried out in pain when the bear bit hard, but from that point forward the bear checked his strength in deference to his smaller partner. The play bout lasted about twenty minutes, and the bear returned over the next several days to play with the dog.

  In Churchill, this kind of play is not unique to a single bear-dog pair. Multiple bears may romp with multiple dogs in a sort of cross-species playfest. A video clip captures the massive bears, dirty-white against the whiter snow, using slow-motion movements that engage but don’t frighten the dogs. One bear nudges a dog with his big blunt snout; another folds a dog in a literal bear hug, causing the dog to squirm. Once, a bear opens his jaws right around a dog’s head. Yet the dogs are relaxed around the bears and come back for more.

  The bear-dog play behavior cries out for more study. Are the play pairings random, that is, will any bear play with any dog? Or do specific partners choose each other time and again? What happens when the bears and dogs are apart for some time? Is there any indication that one partner misses the other? Has a bear ever encountered the carcass of his dog play partner, or a dog come upon the body of his bear play partner? Is there anything approaching a Tarra-Bella relationship among the dogs and bears of Churchill, such that cross-species grief might follow when a play partner dies?

  Not all cross-species friendships are as ripe for questions about mourning. Take, for instance, the bond supposedly shared by a snake and a hamster. The hamster was introduced to a zoo snake in winter, when the reptile’s metabolism was low, and the snake cradled the hamster in its coils. Holland admits that had the meeting come about in summer, the outcome might have been a rodent-shaped lump in the snake’s body. What happened to the hamster as time went on? Holland doesn’t say, and I wouldn’t anticipate any evidence of animal grief emerging from this scenario.

  The friendship between the hippo Owen and the tortoise Mzee is, on the other hand, remarkable for its constancy. Orphaned during the terrible Christmas 2004 tsunami, Owen was brought to the Kenyan animal park where 130-year-old Mzee lived. Although no dramatic spark flared up between the two, the pair, led by the younger, rambunctious Owen, gradually developed a shared affection. Before long, each followed the other around and an idiosyncratic communication system emerged. Mzee nips Owen’s tail to propel Owen along on a walk. Owen nudges Mzee’s feet when it’s his turn to initiate: he pushes on Mzee’s back right foot when he wants Mzee to steer right and does the opposite for going left. What will happen when Owen loses Mzee, or Mzee loses Owen? The price of an enduring friendship is often survivor’s grief, and we know that grief does not respect species’ boundaries.

  Cross-species friendships, and the grief that may follow, may be found in our homes as well. Melissa Kohout was moved by her cat Madison’s response to the death of her dog, a Doberman called Lucie. Madison had joined the family as a kitten when Lucie was four years old. Because Madison arrived with ringworm, she required a bath every evening for weeks, and Lucie took it upon herself to lick the kitten dry. For years, the two animals groomed each other each night. Seven years along in this relationship, Lucie the dog fell ill with cancer. During this difficult time, a funny incident occurred. As cats will do when “gifting” favored humans, Madison brought a rat into the bedroom late one night and dropped it on Kohout’s chest. “Covers went flying,” Kohout told me, “and cat and rat ran into the kitchen. The rat bit Madison on the front paw, and she screamed. Lucie, as sick as she was, came running, bit the rat in half, and went back to bed.”

  When Lucie died, it happened at home. Madison climbed into the bed and burrowed under the covers, something she had never before done. For about the next month, she emerged from that self-made cave only to eat and use the litter box. After that “time of mourning,” as Kohout puts it, Madison never again sheltered herself in the bed in that way.

  Karen Schomburg describes an instance of cross-species grief that occurred on her small farm in the state of Washington. At thirty-two years of age, her Shetland pony Peaches fell ill with shortness of breath and congestion. Jezebel, a goat who had been friends with Peaches for years, showed great concern, refusing the company of other goats in preference to time spent with Peaches. Worried enough herself to make frequent checks on the pony, Schomburg saw something surprising late one night: Peaches had backed up against the manger to steady herself as she grew weaker, and Jezebel was pressed up close to her, leaning into her chest. Only with the extra strength from her friend could Peaches stay on her feet. In the morning, however, Peaches was on the ground, dead. To Schomburg, Jezebel looked forlorn.

  The story of Peaches and Jezebel shows that, even when animals have their own kind around them (unlike Owen and Mzee), they may opt for a cross-species friendship. With other goats available, why did Jezebel seek the company of a horse? Why did Tarra, surrounded by other elephants at the Tennessee sanctuary, desire Bella’s canine company? How did these cross-species friendships come to matter so much that the survivor became emotionally involved when the friend was dying (as with Jezebel) or after she had died (as with Tarra)? Many animals are curious, sociable, and open to new experiences. They may seek out more of the “positive vibes” that come from an initial interaction with another creature, and a friendship may be the result.
r />   In a way, cross-species mourning is woven through many of the stories in this book. Animals may grieve for a human companion who dies, and we may mourn the animals we love and lose. Berlin, Germany, underwent a citywide outpouring of grief for the polar bear Knut, who died in 2011. Knut became a “national obsession,” as the New York Times put it, when he thrived in the Berlin Zoo even after rejection by his mother. In three places—the neighborhood of Spandau, the National History Museum, and the zoo itself—memorials have been or will be erected in honor of the bear.

  An urge to memorialize occurs, too, on a smaller scale. Recently I attended a brief ceremony after the death of a cat named Tinky. For eighteen constant years, Tinky had been the companion of my friend Nuala Galbari, who with her partner David Justis cares for a variety of animals, from cats and rabbits to horses and birds. When Tinky was a kitten, Nuala played the piano with him next to her on the bench; she fell into the habit of moving his paws gently over the keys. Tinky not only responded positively but began to play musical notes to communicate with Nuala. When Nuala developed a debilitating illness, Tinky, attuned to her weakened state, stayed by her bedside. During her long recovery, the bond between the two was cemented. When she was again healthy, Nuala continued to share a love of music with her cat. “On several occasions,” Nuala says, “Tinky played up to six notes in an octave with his right paw. Following applause, he might then decide to play some lower notes with his left paw. No doubt, the little cat had somehow figured out that I played with both hands, and so he used both paws.” When Tinky, much older and in a weakened state, took his last breath and died at home, a small group of us felt his loss keenly. We came together where he was buried, in Nuala and David’s backyard, to share photographs and poems that evoked Tinky’s life.

  In The Last Walk: Reflection on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives, Jessica Pierce writes movingly of the last weeks, and the death, of her dog Ody. Ody was a Viszla breed, fourteen years old. In his extreme old age, his legs were severely atrophied, he had dementia, and he was almost completely blind and deaf. Pierce, a bioethicist, worked to figure out what a “good death” would mean for Ody: what she owed Ody, what time and manner of death was right for him and not only for her own fierce attachment to him. Of course, Ody wasn’t always infirm. For many years, he had been Pierce’s running and mountain-biking partner. Even now, with his ill health, she worried that what seemed to her a terribly diminished life didn’t seem so to Ody. But things were getting worse; Ody was falling and, unable to get up, lying in his own poop until someone in the family found him. Eventually, Pierce arranged for a vet to come to her home and euthanize Ody.

  After Ody died, Pierce realized that, wrenching as it was, the moment of euthanasia wasn’t the most difficult:

  For me, the anticipatory grief—the sense of impending loss—was by far the worst stage. I mourned for Ody long before he even came close to death. The moment of his death was sharp and painful—the kind of grief that makes you feel as if you’re drowning. But that didn’t last more than a few hours.

  What I like best about Pierce’s writing is its honesty. She describes Ody as “one of my greatest loves and also my millstone, for fourteen long years.” Ody wasn’t always in poor health, but he was always a high-maintenance sort of dog—contrary and neurotic, in Pierce’s words. I understand the love, and I understand the millstone comment too.

  In the den of my home, on the mantel, sit eight small cherrywood boxes. Five contain the ashes of family cats, two of family rabbits, and one, the biggest, the cremated remains of a dog we cared for after my brother-in-law died. On each box is affixed a small plaque with our chosen words of memory. For feisty Gray and White, originally a proud and distant big-tom feral cat who fell in love with indoor living after he became ill and we took him in, the plaque reads: “Alpha feral, who finally found the love he always deserved.” For quiet Michael, who lived only three years and also battled a number of complicated medical conditions, something pithier: “The sweetest boy.”

  Some of our lost animals were high-maintenance. Some were contrary, and neurotic. We grieve for them all, who were our friends.

  11

  ANIMAL SUICIDE?

  Bear farm: It’s a term that jolts. Chicken farm, cow farm, pig farm, even bison farm or llama farm, these places are familiar. Once past childhood’s innocence, we carry images of farm animals that aren’t always bucolic; that animals may be killed in ways far from humane is something we know. Sometimes an extra layer of information brings the situation into terrible focus; Annie Potts’ description in her book Chicken of what occurs in chicken slaughterhouses haunts me, too much so to repeat the details here. However we respond to such knowledge—whether we adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet, or select free-range meat from local farms, or eat meat from any available source-the farming of chickens, cows, and pigs is a familiar practice.

  Bear farming is not; at least it wasn’t for me until quite recently, when one of Marc Bekoff’s blog posts caught my eye: “Bear Kills Son and Herself on a Chinese Bear Farm.” After a bit, my mind shifted from taking in the basic concept of a “bear farm” to considering the headline’s main point. Bear suicide? In August 2011, first Chinese and then some Western media published accounts of the incident to which Bekoff refers. The UK’s Daily Mail online, not known for journalistic circumspection, declared in its own headline, “The ultimate sacrifice: Mother bear kills her cub and then herself to save her from a life of torture.”

  In order to reflect clearly upon this bear’s actions, and their possible relationship to bear grief, I need briefly to tackle a disturbing topic: what happens at a bear farm. More correctly, it’s called a bile farm. Across Asia, from China to Vietnam and South Korea, bears are held captive because their bile contains a compound that is considered medically valuable. This substance, called ursodeoxycholic acid or UDCA, is touted as useful in fighting liver disease, high fevers, and other ailments. Further, some companies put bear bile into products like gum, toothpaste, and face cream.

  The biology of this situation is complicated, because it’s not only bears that produce the sought-after bile. Many animals, including humans, produce it as well, and a synthetic compound called ursodiol has been created and used to treat gallstones. Rather than signaling the end of bile farms, however, these alternatives have apparently pushed things in exactly the wrong direction. Else Poulsen writes in her book Smiling Bears that the appearance of alternatives not dependent on bear bile has backfired for bear welfare, as their artificial nature has lent cachet to the genuine article. The bile extracted from living bears has become an expensive trophy among a certain moneyed set.

  Poulsen’s book offers a heartbreaking tutorial about what goes on at bear farms. (This is a paragraph to skip if you wish to avoid vivid descriptions of animal suffering.) In China, Asian black bears become nothing more than living bile machines. “Each bear,” Poulsen writes, “lies down, permanently, in a coffin-shaped, wire mesh crate for his entire life—years—able to move only one arm so that he can reach out for food.” “Permanently” is the searing word, and it comes up again in another of Poulsen’s passages: “Without proper anesthetic, drugged only half-unconscious, the bear is tied down by ropes, and a metal catheter, which eventually rusts, is permanently stuck through his abdomen into his gall bladder.” Over time, some bears simply lose their wits. Unable to free themselves, they bang their heads on the bars; the relief of death comes far too slowly.

  Estimates vary for the number of bears held captive at bile farms across Asia, but the number seems certain to exceed ten thousand. One of these captives was the mother highlighted by Bekoff. The sequence of events seems to go like this: As a worker at the farm prepared to harvest his bile, the cub cried out in distress. Somehow, the mother broke free, grabbed her cub, and hugged him with such power that he died of strangulation. Then she ran headfirst into a wall, and died.

  That description, of course, is far from adequate. Important information is missing. What
exactly was the worker doing? How did the mother break free? Just as significantly, I’ve stripped the mother of any intention, motivation, or emotion. That’s how I was taught to write about animal behavior in graduate school, but (as this book attests) that’s not how I write about animals anymore. Here’s an alternative version: The cub cried out in distress as a worker prepared to harvest his bile. The mother, distressed by her loved infant’s pain, broke free, and squeezed the life out of her baby so that he would no longer suffer. Overcome by her own emotional pain, she ran, purposefully, headfirst into a wall, killing herself.

  Which account is the more accurate? In the first place, it’s hard to focus on such an analytical question when sorrow for these two bears, and thousands more, hits so hard. The underlying scientific questions are important, though: Could the mother bear have gone insane—an outcome some of Poulsen’s passages suggest is possible—and flung herself toward the wall without any sense of what she was doing? Can some animals make a conscious choice to kill themselves? A witness quoted in a newspaper report made the claim that the mother killed her cub “to save it from a life of hell.” Can some animals reason to the degree necessary to justify such an assertion? Can bears carry out what is in effect a mercy killing? We know that the flip side of love is sorrow, and the flip side of shared joy is solitary grief. Can sorrow go so deep that it causes an animal to bring about a loved one’s death in order to free him from physical suffering?