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From: b.schafer@ed.ac.uk (Burkhard)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: elephant burials
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2024 16:43:02 +0000
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Martin Harran wrote:

> 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."

That seems a bit unfair, There is a "could" and a "potentially" in
there, and that seems perfectly plausible. We observe a behaviour 
in population A that we know is (also) a reaction to grief. We
then observe the same behaviour in population B, and there is
no obvious explanation other than grief. Concluding on that basis
that this "could" be an indicator that also population B experiences
grief seems OK - one can then reject the explanation, on all sorts of
 grounds, but that does not change the fact that the case for grief is 
stronger with this observation than without it.