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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

"When the temporal glands near their eyes stream in circumstances that, for us, would be emotional, they’re crying. When a bereaved elephant mother carries her dead baby round on her tusks, or trails miserably behind the herd for weeks, her head hanging down, she’s grieving. When other elephants sit for hours around the body of a dead elephant, they’re mourning. When they cover an elephant corpse with soil or vegetation, or move elephant bones, they’re being reverential. When they cover a dead human, or build a protective wall of sticks around a wounded human, they’re showing an empathic acknowledgment of our shared destiny that we’d do well to learn...

If you were an elephant... be careful, though. You’re likely to end up dead because someone wants a couple of your teeth."

That was beautifully written.

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That was beautifully written.

That was ascribing human emotions and behaviors to animals without a lot of evidence.

It reminds me of this photo[1]. People thought the male was hugging the dying female in a fit of grief. So touching.

When they asked animal experts, it turns out the male was actually forcing the female to mate. In human terms we call that rape.

[1] http://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/science/dying-kanga...

Just because animals have rape doesn't meant they don't also have grief.

Animals don't exactly have the same willpower and reputation requirements that one finds in typically civilized human social order.

If animals have rape, it's a subset of human-on-human rape, and carries fewer of the nuanced consequences of rape among humans.

Psychological trauma is probably not even in the equation when it comes to rape among most animals below a certain level of intelligence, particularly when considering untamed animals.

Due to the minimal psychological aspects, which assuredly are a hallmark of human-on-human rape, and the bald fact that the very word "rape" itself carries loaded connotations when considered as a concept by humans, I wonder if it is appropriate to use the same word for variations of sexual intercourse and related behavior among wild animals.

That wasn't the point of OP.

It was humans have always applied our feel good emotions to animals and we do it incorrectly all the time. Here's one example.

To the grief, most humans might rape but most won't commit necrophilia. I think it's a pretty good argument against grief in animals. (There's a lot of additional evidence of necrophilia in animals)

I'm not sure how elephants compare to kangaroos. However, I think that actual strengthens the argument does it not?

Mammals, like humans, do both good and bad things. They have similar brains. Those similar brains probably experience the world in similar ways.

Ascribing human emotions and behaviors to animals without a lot of evidence is bad, like saying that the male was forcing the female to mate. The animal expert did not say that.

The image is of a highly stressed male that is trying to get the attention of a dead female by nudging and lifting the head with his arm. It might look odd, but its no more strange than a peacock lifting his feathers over a cat. In human terms we call that confused behavior, as we don't generally say that peacocks are raping cats.

I don't think it is. I think it is observing elephant emotions and recognizing them for what they are.

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