From the time of our earliest childhood encounters with animals, we casually ascribe familiar emotions to them. But scientists have long cautioned against such anthropomorphizing, arguing that it limits our ability to truly comprehend the lives of other creatures. Recently, however, things have begun to shift in the other direction, and anthropologist Barbara J. King is at the forefront of that movement, arguing strenuously that we canOCoand "should"OCoattend to animal emotions. With "How Animals Grieve," she draws our attention to the specific case of grief, and relates story after storyOCofrom fieldsites, farms, homes, and moreOCoof animals mourning lost companions, mates, or friends.aKing tells of elephants surrounding their matriarch as she weakens and dies, and, in the following days, attending to her corpse as if holding a vigil. A housecat loses her sister, from whom she's never before been parted, and spends weeks pacing the apartment, wailing plaintively. A baboon loses her daughter to a predator and sinks into grief. In each case, King uses her anthropological training to interpret and try to explain what we seeOCoto help us understand this animal grief properly, as something neither the same as nor wholly different from the human experience of loss. aThe resulting book is both daring and down-to-earth, strikingly ambitious even as itOCOs careful to acknowledge the limits of our understanding. Through the moving stories she chronicles and analyzes so beautifully, King brings us closer to the animals with whom we share a planet, and helps us see our own experiences, attachments, and emotions as part of a larger web of life, death, love, and loss.
- ISBN10 022604372X
- ISBN13 9780226043722
- Publish Date 21 April 2014 (first published 1 January 2013)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 202
- Language English