How Animals Grieve by Barbara J. King Read Free Book Online Page B

highlights individual variation in grief behavior, which is consonant with cutting edge animal-behavior science. As with cats, dogs, and other animals, not all horses grieve when a companion dies; the continuum of reactions ranges from extreme depression, such as I’ve been describing, to apparent indifference.
    When a foal dies, some mares vocalize and act in an anxious manner. Others have little visible reaction. Given the strength of the mammalian mother-infant bond, I was at first surprised to learn that some horse mothers don’t grieve for their foals. But on second thought, it fit with my knowledge of other animals. Through her study of chimpanzees, Jane Goodall has expanded scientists’ thinking about the variable quality of maternal behavior. Caring, competent mothers exist side by side with indifferent, neglectful mothers among our closest living relatives—indeed, within our own species—so why not in other animals too? It’s possible, as well, that a mother who appears indifferent in the presence of her dead offspring may have been quite nurturing when the baby was alive, actively eliciting her care.
    One pattern does seem to hold for horses, according to experts in equine behavior. “Horses given the opportunity to interact with a dead pasture mate,” Marcella reports, “generally show less vocalization and anxiety and return to normal behavior more quickly.” It has become a common practice to ensure that surviving horses view the body of their dead companion, in the belief that this may help them cope. What is needed for the scientific investigation of horse grief and its amelioration is a database, compiled in a consistent and rigorous manner, of reports that demonstrate a full range of outcomes, from horses who are helped by viewing a companion’s body to those—like the filly who repeatedly pawed at her friend Silver’s grave even after viewing his body—who are not.
    Laying out the body for viewing by animals at risk for grief is an increasingly popular practice in other contexts as well. In zoos and private homes, and on farms, it’s adopted by people who know that animals grieve and who want to ease that grief. It’s a strategy that seemed to work with a goat named Myrtle. Myrtle knew her own mind. Adopted into a home in Colorado, she repeatedly escaped into a neighbor’s yard where she could be with the only remotely goatlike animals nearby—horses. Again and again, she was brought back home, only to escape again. Finally, the wayward goat was allowed to stay where she clearly wanted to be, at the neighbor’s house.
    Janelle Helling, who described the horses’ protective circle around a newborn foal, was the horse-owning neighbor in question. She decided that Myrtle deserved the opportunity to enjoy the companionship not only of horses but of other goats. She confesses that it wasn’t a decision reached solely out of compassion for a lonely goat; there was also the matter of Myrtle’s wanderlust. Whenever Janelle rode a horse off her property, Myrtle would trot behind. This wasn’t safe, given local traffic. So Janelle adopted a goat called Blondie, hoping that Myrtle might take to her and that the two goats might become homebodies together.
    The plan succeeded. Four or five years older than Myrtle, Blondie was no restless wanderer. She stayed put at Janelle’s. The two goats hit it off right away, and soon Myrtle began to stay home too. Janelle estimates that Myrtle and Blondie were almost always within twenty feet of one another, and often much closer. “If one of them showed up without the other,” she remembers, “you knew something was wrong.” A few times, one or the other would manage to get her head and horns stuck in a wire fence, requiring rescue by a human with wire cutters. Most of the time, though, Myrtle and Blondie spent the day comfortably grazing, chewing cud, playing, and napping.
    Several years passed in this fashion. Then one autumn, Blondie became ill and