Death rituals in the animal kingdom

Humans and elephants aren’t the only ones to visit the bodies of the recently deceased. On 6 May 2000, a dead female dolphin was spotted on the seabed, 50 metres from the eastern coast of Mikura Island, near Japan. Two adult males remained with the body at all times, leaving the body only briefly to return to the surface to breathe.

Elephants, dolphins, and chimpanzees all have complex social behaviours that we only partly understand. Since it is so rare for humans to observe a natural death in the wild, most of the information that we do have comes from non-experimental case studies thanks to quick-thinking researchers.