Birds hold 'funerals' for dead

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by RealSpoke

 

This bugs me. It's as if years of video footage and academic studies never get a chance to connect and solidify the concept of some animals being conscious of grief, separation and loss.

Instead, we get it presented like it's some crazy rumour. It seems there's a reluctance to get down and dirty with the connotations.

Whats that tell you about the rest of science

reply to post by Kandinsky


It's because humans have too big of an ego.

reply to post by phroziac


Science has no problem admitting that advanced animals mourn, its the stupid uneducated humans that do.

I have wondered If you could transfer consciousness, how would an animal conscience behave if you took it from a 1 day old animal and transferred it to a 1 day old human then let it grow up. would its expirances in life and its ability to use hands and a voice make it as human as anyone els?

Going off how my dogs have behaved I think that if they had human bodies they would do a lot of things similar to humans. The use the door handle to open doors now and have learned a few other things just from watching me and others in the house.

might sound like a stupid thing to think but, you cant help every thought that pops into your head can you

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by winofiend

 

It's hard to say. A similar controversy to the Abolitionist Movement could occur as the right to life and quality of life would be disputed in similar ways. In the West particularly, we'd be very resistant to the idea and the evidence. Probably wouldn't stop us eating bacon, but guilt might take the greatness from the taste. Sheesh...

Hmm, long term perhaps, there are still people today living opulent lavish lifestyles, even in the west, who dine on meals made simply because they are exotic or rare. Adding intelligent into the mix, I see them hardly discouraged.. but I can hold hope for the average person. Even in Korea there are ground level movements that bring attention to the dog meat trade there. So there must be hope somewhere.

I think bacon has not tasted like bacon for over 15 years. Perhaps my tastes, or how they're feeding/raising the pigs.. but I'd rather have one look me in eye and get that connection that you know something is awake in there, than have one on a plate and only because it's a lazy food from the store.

Originally posted by phroziac

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by RealSpoke

 

This bugs me. It's as if years of video footage and academic studies never get a chance to connect and solidify the concept of some animals being conscious of grief, separation and loss.

Instead, we get it presented like it's some crazy rumour. It seems there's a reluctance to get down and dirty with the connotations.

Whats that tell you about the rest of science

It tells me that not enough of the general public actually query people in the fields of science. If they did they would have answers, rather than a conceived answer that is perpetuated by an original misinformed statement, or the general unscientific claim of some things. Such as animals are dumb.

I'm fairly sure if you queried a scientist in the field about something, if it's got evidence to support it, they will show this.

A lot of people just assume something is valid because there is no current evidence to show them otherwise. They assume it's the scientists fault.. but this is a little like blaming an unread dictionary for always spelling certain words incorrectly or because everyone else spells it the same incorrect way.

I personally think that animals are smarter than we give them credit for. Not to say that there are some mighty dumb animals out there but intelligence is a human construct is it not?

Anyway, just to add to the discussion in a tangential way, there are species of birds that keep a single mate throughout their lives too. I know this is just anecdotal but I do have multiple feeders on my property and I absolutely love watching doves interact. They always are paired off and I rarely see just one dove. Now that has to mean something. Birds seeking just one mate for life that is.

Side note... hummingbirds are just horrendous to each other though. Have enough of those around that I could possibly use an air traffic control tower. Was just refreshing the Vicks on the hummingbird feeders (keeps the bees off. Bees can smell, hummingbirds can't) and had a few just buzz up and check me out.

But birds are just simply amazing... and apologize for the off topic nature of this post lol.

This is a very good read, sad it was presented in a poor way.

My theory is that all pack/flock animals have the ability to realize or mourn ones death. Birds are extremely smart. Every seen a crow pick threw a trash can just to find a McDonald's bag. They realize there in these bags there is a better chance of food. How about when a Dogs owner dies, the dog goes into a deeply depressed state, same if you have multiple dogs and one of them is to die, the others will almost seem frantic then wildly apathetic. I think that we humans are only just beginning and willing to understand about how animals can feel grief and mourn. The problem is, people seem to have a problem with a sub human species being able to express emotion.

reply to post by winofiend


But we still have lab rats to test on?

reply to post by ErroneousDylan



While you are on the subject of Birds, I want to share this beautiful story of the Turtledove...




KNOW THAT WHEN YOU SEE TURTLEDOVES IN THE LAND... it means that the Hour has come.. know the language of the Birds, so that when you see them, you will prepare yourself for the next abode.

endtimepilgrim.org...

This turtledove has a sad story to tell, but who cares to listen to sad stories?

Therefore the Turtledove took flight, and when she did, all creeping and crawling things went to their homes and died and were seen no more.

Good luck my dear Pilgrims, when you do see them, please visit my place, if God wills you will find Grace. Amen.

Peace!

I know this isn't quite on topic but I have done a lot of reading about NDE's and NDE experiences. So many "survivors" claim to see thousands, millions, multitudes of little lights on their journey to the beyond. I have wondered if each living being, from ants, buffalo, birds, fish, etc. (maybe even bacteria?) don't each have their own light essence/conciousness that also travels beyond in death of the physical body, to be reclaimed or reunited somewhere else.

Originally posted by selfharmonise
reply to post by SpearMint

 

Really?

Birds are very smart.
.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Officers at a Seattle-area police department have found themselves in a flap with some unusual suspects: an angry flock of birds.

Crows have been attacking police in the parking lot of an Everett Police Department precinct station. They've been swooping down and dive-bombing the officers as they walk to and from their cars.

Lt. Bob Johns said he recently was flanked by the aggressive birdbirds and "got zinged."

"They're like velociraptors," Johns said.

One officer used his siren to try to scare away the crows, but it didn't work. The birds responded by decorating his car.

"If your cops have done something that (the crows) perceive as a threat, they could be keying in on them because they're all wearing the same kind of uniform," Milner said.

Birds may be much smarter than we have previously thought. It seems they may be good judge of character also.

I believe most animals understand death and they also mourn their death. Now this isnt about birds but when a gorilla uses sign language to talk about his mothers death years after it happend then I would have to say they have emotions like us.

I watched a few videos of Koko the gorilla (also taught sign language) one video she was watching her favorite movie and the part when the child hugs and says goodbye to his mother koko doesnt like to watch that part so she turns away and signs shes sad about the child leaving his mother.

Koko also had a pet cat and after it died koko got upset

This is Michael the gorilla talking about his mother being killed, I dont know sign language so im not sure if this is totally true or this is propaganda for their foundation




This is Koko watching the movie.




When Koko's cat died

From Jane Goodall's studies and movie, I recall viewing a young chimpanzee mourning the death of it's elderly mother.

I found this video, not related to Goodall's movie, which mainly shows the gathering as a learning experience about death, except for the mother, who is behaving as if she is into denial about her infant's death.



Here's another good video that also shows the grouping behaviour.

Funeral you say?



hmmz oke.. I aint going to my granny's!

Very cool find. Makes one wonder doesn't it? Now I'm wondering from where our mourning habits may have evolved. Perhaps in the earliest days we buried our dead so they would not attract predators capable of attacking nearby living people. Just a thought.

Our planet is evolving. Millions of lifetimes tend to do that.

reply to post by ErroneousDylan

I had the privalege of seeing one of these bird "funerals" once, only it was crows. Walking my dog one morning, I passed by a black heap of feathers lying on the grass. My dogs sniffer led me up to it and I realized what I had found was a fallen crow. It looked pristine, like it had just died. All its feathers were intact and it appeared to have no visible injury.

After I walked away, I turned to look back and thats when I saw the group of crows sitting silently in the tree directly above their fallen comrade. There were a half a dozen or so, just sitting there (which for crows is unusual). There are lots of crows in our neighborhood and they usually make a lot of noise when they are about, calling to each other and making a ruckus.

This struck me odd that they were just sitting there, so I walked back over to where they stood silent vigil and again approached the bird on the ground. Looking up, I could see that they were all eyeing me carefully, but still they did not fly away or make a sound. Usually one cannot approach them that close, they will fly off, especially when I am walking my dog. These were sitting in a tree about 25-30 feet up. After getting the eeeby jeebys I quietly backed away and left them to their solitude. I looked back one final time before leaving the area and they were still sitting there.

Later I saw a show on PBS(?) about crows that described that event as a funeral. Ahhh, I said... confirmed. I seen em. If you google it there are a lot of people bringing stories of "Crow Funerals".

Heres one…

Originally posted by ErroneousDylan
It would seem that this funeral system that the birds are implementing is very similar to the one elephants do so, there is a possibility that these birds may also have an emotional system. Of course, it still serves a purpose for protecting themselves and others but it would seem that is not what it's all about entirely.

I've long believed that our emotive responses have evolved from survival instinct. For example, there is a course through which it's likely that Human love evolved.

Initially, men would have had the instinct to breed with multiple partners, but at the same time they need to protect their partner and their future child. They stick around just long enough... We even see this happening now, but we just see it as a social problem when the abandonment of children and partners is probably more driven by instinct and the need to breed than we accept.

But this partnership of mutual survival and protection is probably how we came to develop love. It could be argued that love is actually a very basic mechanism to ensure mutual survival and the survival of our young too.

How many of us know people who got together when they were young, had a baby, separated, went their separate ways, had another baby with someone else... This is part of the basic natural world, but people refuse to see that their "boredom" in a relationship is actually natures way of encouraging you to move on to spread your seed further.

It doesn't devalue love, but it goes a long way to explaining a lot of Human behavior. We seem to forget that we are animals. We think we are somehow "above" other species in this respect. The truth is that we relabel emotions to separate ourselves from the animals. We don't like to think of ourselves as acting instinctively in everything we do.

It seems logical to me that if Humans have evolved to label instinctual responses as something else, many other species would have done the same. I think it's likely that the more social the species the more likely they would have altered instinct into emotion.

Does that make any sense? I'm trying to explain it in the best way I can but it's a very complex thought process where every aspect supports another...

i don't think the experience of grief, and mourning, is an exclusively human one. animals of all kinds can experience it too, in my opinion. only they don't display what we would recognise as 'funerals' and 'grief' on the whole. so this aspect of animal behaviour probably goes largely unnoticed.