ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2018
Evolutionary thanatology.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Unveiling animal death cognition: the role of social systems.Science China. Life sciences · 2026Article
- Camera Traps Document Infant Corpse Carrying Behaviour in Multiple Unhabituated Chimpanzee Populations.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Prairie voles as a model for adaptive reward remodeling following loss of a bonded partner.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2024Review
- Prairie voles as a model for adaptive reward remodeling following loss of a bonded partner.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2024Review
- Prairie voles as a model for adaptive reward remodeling following loss of a bonded partner.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2024Review
- Dead-infant carrying by chimpanzee mothers in the Budongo Forest.Primates; journal of primatology · 2022Article
- Why do some primate mothers carry their infant's corpse? A cross-species comparative study.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Fostering Existential Maturity to Manage Terror in a Pandemic.Journal of palliative medicine · 2021Article
- Callitrichid responses to dead and dying infants: the effects of paternal bonding and cause of death.Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Review
- Baboon thanatology: responses of filial and non-filial group members to infants' corpses.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Responses to death and dying: primates and other mammals.Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Responses to dead and dying conspecifics and heterospecifics by wild mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Behavioural responses of free-ranging Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) towards dying and dead conspecifics.Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Do chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) console a bereaved mother?Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Primate thanatology and hominoid mortuary archeology.Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Review
- Reaction to allospecific death and to an unanimated gorilla infant in wild western gorillas: insights into death recognition and prolonged maternal carrying.Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Elephant behavior toward the dead: A review and insights from field observations.Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Scent of death: Evolution from sea to land of an extreme collective attraction to conspecific death.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Societies, including those of humans, have evolved multiple ways of dealing with death across changing circumstances and pressures. Despite many studies focusing on specialized topics, for example necrophoresis in eusocial insects, mortuary activities in early human societies, or grief and mourning in bereavement, there has been little attempt to consider these disparate research endeavours from a broader evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary thanatology does this by adopting an explicit evolutionary stance for studies of death and dying within the sociological, psychological and biological disciplines. The collection of papers in this themed issue demonstrates the value of this approach by describing what is known about how various nonhuman species detect and respond to death in conspecifics, how problems of disposing of the dead have evolved in human societies across evolutionary time and also within much shorter time frames, how human adults' understanding of death develops, and how it is ultimately reflected in death-related language. The psychological significance and impact of death is clearly seen in some species' grief-like reactions to the loss of attachment figures, and perhaps uniquely in humans, the existence of certain psychological processes that may lead to suicide. Several research questions are proposed as starting points for building a more comprehensive picture of the ontogeny and phylogeny of how organisms deal with death.This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals'.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.