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From: Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: elephant burials
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2024 13:52:25 +0000
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On Fri, 22 Mar 2024 13:09:45 +0000, b.schafer@ed.ac.uk (Burkhard)
wrote:

>Martin Harran wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 18 Mar 2024 09:47:06 +0000, b.schafer@ed.ac.uk (Burkhard)
>> wrote:
>
>>>some time ago, Martin, I and a few others discussed burials,
>>>and the way humans think about and relate to dead ancestors.
>>>
>>>One question in this context was if similar behaviour can
>>>be found in other animals. Here's a short paper on a 
>>>recently discovered "elephant graveyard" - carefully argued
>>>I'd say, without overegging the evidence
>>>https://theconversation.com/elephant-calves-have-been-found-buried-what-does-that-mean-225409?
>>>
>>>and here the academic paper it's based on
>>>https://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/article/view/8826
>
>> They have not overegged it in regard to the findings suggesting
>> *burial* but I see nothing to support a jump from that to *grieving*.
>
>That's because that was not the subject of that study, for this
>you'd need to follow the links that they provide, which gets you 
>inter alia to Anderson JR. 2016 Comparative thanatology. 
>Curr. Biol. 26, R543–R556. who discusses
>the emotional underpinnings of these activities. The findings
>about burials support the analysis in studies like Anderson's

I was reacting to the summary in your first link where they say "If
this conclusion is accurate, these observations could indicate an
understanding of *death and grief* potentially unlike anything else
we've seen in the animal kingdom, revealing yet another way in which
humans are not as unique as previously thought." (My emphasis added.)

I haven't read the full paper but a quick search for grief/grieving
doesn't turn up anything in it so I assume the authors didn't make
this association, it was the person who wrote the article for The
Conversation who claim to exercise "academic rigour, journalistic
flair."