From the time of our earliest childhood encounters with animals, we
casually ascribe familiar emotions to them. But scientists have
long cautioned against such anthropomorphizing, arguing that it
limits our ability to truly comprehend the lives of other
creatures. Recently, however, things have begun to shift in the
other direction, and anthropologist Barbara J. King is at the
forefront of that movement, arguing strenuously that we can - and
should - attend to animal emotions. With "How Animals Grieve", she
draws our attention to the specific case of grief, and relates
story after story - from fieldsites, farms, homes, and more - of
animals mourning lost companions, mates, or friends. King tells of
elephants surrounding their matriarch as she weakens and dies, and,
in the following days, attending to her corpse as if holding a
vigil. A housecat loses her sister, from whom she's never before
been parted, and spends weeks pacing the apartment, wailing
plaintively. A baboon loses her daughter to a predator and sinks
into grief. In each case, King uses her anthropological training to
interpret and try to explain what we see-to help us understand this
animal grief properly, as something neither the same as nor wholly
different from the human experience of loss. The resulting book is
both daring and down to earth, strikingly ambitious even as it's
careful to acknowledge the limits of our understanding. Through the
moving stories she chronicles and analyzes so beautifully, King
brings us closer to the animals with whom we share a planet and
helps us see our own experiences, attachments, and emotions as part
of a larger web of life, death, love, and loss.
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