Do Animals Grieve?

Do animals grieve when their partners or “friends” die?  The answer to this is somewhat surprising as discussed in Natalie Angier, About Death, Just Like Us or Pretty Much Unaware?, NY Times, Sept. 2, 2008.

Here are some examples:

• Primates — A recent case showed a mother gorilla refusing to give up the body of her dead baby.  It is common among primates to keep a deceased child and treat it as if it were still alive.  The reaction to death appears stronger in the parent-child and child-parent situations than in other situations.
• Lions — Will eat a fallen comrade.
• Mole rats — Isolate a decedent in a communal latrine and seal it with an earthen plug.
• Insects — Often have “prompt corpse management.”
• Honeybees — Embalm dead animals who die in the hive in resin collected from trees.
• Elephants — Display reverence for the remains of their kind.