Slog
News & ArtsFriday, January 6, 2012
Death Homo Sapiens: Funeral Director
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 12:09 PM
The San Diego Zoo had to euthanize two sick, older elephants (ages 43 and 56) this week. Afterwards, they organized a funeral for the others:
Cha Cha, estimated to be 43 years old, was euthanized Wednesday. To allow other elephants to see her a final time, her lifeless body was lifted on a forklift and taken to where other elephants in the Elephant Odyssey exhibit are kept.
Amazing. I'd heard of elephantine funerals—but is this the first time in history that human beings played funeral director?
Also:
Elephant Odyssey, one of the more popular exhibits at the zoo, was closed temporarily but was reopened Friday. But elephant keeper interactions with the public have been cancelled to provide time for them to mourn, officials said.
4
@2:
I wouldn't count on that. When I was at SD Zoo the beginning of last month, the keepers specifically mentioned that these elephants were paired off with companions; while one of them (I think it may have been Cookie) was undergoing a foot "manicure" in front of about two dozen people, her "friend" was hovering near the gate to the enclosure about 30 feet away, swaying back-and-forth, waiting for Cookie to come back out.
There is ample evidence from observations of both captive, as well as wild elephants, that they go through a mourning process for dead and dying comrades. In the wild, they will frequently return to the site of a deceased member of their herd, long after they have decomposed down to just the bones.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2…
I wouldn't count on that. When I was at SD Zoo the beginning of last month, the keepers specifically mentioned that these elephants were paired off with companions; while one of them (I think it may have been Cookie) was undergoing a foot "manicure" in front of about two dozen people, her "friend" was hovering near the gate to the enclosure about 30 feet away, swaying back-and-forth, waiting for Cookie to come back out.
There is ample evidence from observations of both captive, as well as wild elephants, that they go through a mourning process for dead and dying comrades. In the wild, they will frequently return to the site of a deceased member of their herd, long after they have decomposed down to just the bones.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2…
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