ArticlePrimates; journal of primatology2020
Elephant behavior toward the dead: A review and insights from field observations.
Article in Primates; journal of primatology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 58 citations in OpenAlex.
- Knowledge transmission, culture and the consequences of social disruption in wild elephants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Pooled it
- On the nature of grief: uncovering the evolutionary roots of loss across the animal realm.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- Post-mortem infant-directed behaviours in wild Guinea baboons.Primates; journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Taphonomic analysis at Liang Bua reveals the behavioral and technological capabilities ofScience advances · 2026Article
- 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
- Snapshots: most-cited Primates papers by decade (1950s-2020s).Primates; journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Macaque mothers' responses to the deaths of their infants.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Do elephants really never forget? What we know about elephant memory and a call for further investigation.Learning & behavior · 2025Review
- Reviving-like prosocial behavior in response to unconscious or dead conspecifics in rodents.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- A multidimensional approach to the self in non-human animals through the Pattern Theory of Self.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Elephants and algorithms: a review of the current and future role of AI in elephant monitoring.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Review
- Record of thanatology and cannibalism in drills (Mandrillus leucophaeus).Primates; journal of primatology · 2023Article
- Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Reactions to a dead adult female in Japanese macaques at Arashiyama: Why did a non-affiliated female groom the corpse?Primates; journal of primatology · 2023Article
- Physiological plasticity in elephants: highly dynamic glucocorticoids in African and Asian elephants.Conservation physiology · 2023Article
- Caring animals and the ways we wrong them.Biology & philosophy · 2023Article
- Thanatology in the northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus).Primates; journal of primatology · 2022Article
- Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Staring death in the face: chimpanzees' attention towards conspecific skulls and the implications of a face module guiding their behaviour.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Many nonhuman animals have been documented to take an interest in their dead. A few socially complex and cognitively advanced taxa-primates, cetaceans, and proboscideans-stand out for the range and duration of behaviors that they display at conspecific carcasses. Here, we review the literature on field observations of elephants at carcasses to identify patterns in behaviors exhibited. We add to this literature by describing elephant responses to dead elephants in the Samburu National Reserve, northern Kenya. The literature review indicated that behavior of elephants at carcasses most often included approaches, touching, and investigative responses, and these occurred at varying stages of decay, from fresh carcasses to scattered and sun-bleached bones. During our own observations, we also witnessed elephants visiting and revisiting carcasses during which they engaged in extensive investigative behavior, stationary behavior, self-directed behavior, temporal gland streaming, and heightened social interactions with other elephants in the vicinity of a carcass. Elephants show broad interest in their dead regardless of the strength of former relationships with the dead individual. Such behaviors may allow them to update information regarding their social context in this highly fluid fission-fusion society. The apparent emotionality and widely reported inter-individual differences involved in elephant responses to the dead deserve further study. Our research contributes to the growing discipline of comparative thanatology to illuminate the cognition and context of nonhuman animal response to death, particularly among socially complex species.
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