According to the symptoms, when a Elephant He knows that it is near the end of its days, it will return to a certain place to die among the remnants of its relatives, and over time, this remains will become “elephant cemetery” that ties to Tusk and Skulls.
The idea is so powerful that it has made its way to the popular culture, such as in Disney’s “The Sher King”, where images that disturb the pictures of the elephant cemetery have put themselves on the minds of the children. Such cemeteries have indicated the possibility of tantalizing that elephants can understand their deaths and expect them. But do these places really exist, and do the elephants know when they are about to die?
In Africa and elsewhere, there are extraordinary examples when a large number of elephants’ bodies are found in a relatively limited area. Lean propsAn Associate Professor of Animal Act and Welfare at Portsmout University, whose research sees death -related behavior in animals. But sometimes in these cases, the bodies have been linked to a pile of DroughtLarge -scale illegal victim, Geological forces Or toxic algal blum in water holes, which are found to be poisoned Hundreds of elephants Go in the same
The props directly told science that what the researchers are unable to show is that they are graveyards because the elephants traveling to die deliberately. He said, “I can see where that fiction or idea can come into popular culture, but this is exactly what it is: a fiction, he said.
Akshayep RoyA researcher at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research agreed. “I would be very careful about using the term ‘cemetery’,” he said. “The idea of ​​a cemetery that persists is a great extent in which locals and hunters have made fuel.”
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Do the elephants bury their dead?
This does not mean that elephants have no understanding or emotional experience of death. In fact, Rai’s own research opened another angle on this question, with the possibility that the elephants bury their relatives. A 2024 studiesRai and his colleagues conducted five cases in the north Bengal region of India where Baby Asian elephants (Elphos Maximas) Was found Almost completely buried In the pit in the mud drains on separate sites on the tea properties, only their legs are spread through the clay.
According to opinion, the burial seemed strategic. The trench environment may have enabled adult elephants to keep children in a ditch and then scope the earth on their body. “The elephants physically buried the bodies without using the tool, Roy said. “I am as confident as the elephant is to detect water sources and paddy fields. [around] The corpse, and… is not very difficult for elephants to equal the clay above the trench. “
He said that locals from northern Bengal and neighbor Assam have received several other burial places beyond five behaviors and their dissertation has documents, and village elders accept the burial of elephants as established. Similar scenarios have been seen in African elephants (Luxudonta), In which the dead elephants are found covered in branches and leaves.
The propos said why the calves were buried and warned why this thing ended without doing so with elephants, we could not believe that the burial was deliberately.
The Pro said, “I guess the reason we are interested in it is that we want to know that it shows that they understand death.” “It is very difficult to translate it, especially when it’s a rare event. For me, I don’t think we can really confirm whether this is a burial, in the sense that it has such knowledge.”
Although questions may revolve around this aspect of elephant behavior, they show many interesting ways to death. Asian elephants have been observed To take the dead children For hours or days and the bodies of the dead flock are standing around the bodies. Studies Elephants are also shown to suffer while dealing with dead or dead elephants. In Rai’s research, the burial elephants were recorded for an hour when they were in the area.
“We felt it [they were mourning]But in the journal of natural science, it is always difficult to make such behaviors from humanity.
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Scientists have also documented a number of cases in which elephants have come to the place of a body and Interacted with herTouching and smelling its bones with curiosity. In fact, this research shows that African elephants, which were presented with the bones of several species, showed more interest in the skull and tusc of their own species. Search shows that they recognize their own self in death, and to decide through it Physical symbols of excitement The authors of the study suggest that the elephants show that in the presence of bones, they show that they cause an emotional response.
The idea is especially tantalizing, because it seems to be the echo of a reflection that a man will show in the cemetery, “a place where the dead lives, and where we really go out of our way to meet them.” However, evidence of this result is short. Generally, research shows that elephants do not deliberately visit these bodies. It seems that the elephants face dead relatives when they stumble upon a pile of bones. There is no evidence of planned behavior.
“We really need GPS data, where we look at the usual movement patterns in elephants and we see that it is evident from these common routes to go and go,” said Pro.
The truth is that we do not know whether the elephants think they are one day. “There is really no strong evidence that other species do not understand,” said Props.
