I love animals, and having Riesling, my dog, in my life makes a question like this considerably less abstract. I want to know what goes on inside that little head, although I realize there's a fairly large gap between understanding a dog and supplying the entire conversation on his behalf. Death makes that gap feel especially uncomfortable. When an elephant investigates a skull or a chimpanzee stays beside a companion's body, I find myself wanting to know what the animal understands, what they feel, and whether those are even questions we should be trying to answer together.
There are some remarkable observations to talk about, but “Do animals know they'll die?” turns out to contain several different questions. Recognizing that another animal is dead, feeling the loss of a companion, responding to danger, and understanding that your own life will eventually end are different things. Some animals show complex responses to death, and researchers disagree about how much those responses reveal. The evidence gives us plenty to think about without pretending we can translate a trunk touching a bone into a complete thought about mortality.
There Are Several Ways to Understand Death
One useful proposal comes from philosopher Susana Monsó and researcher Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró. They argue that a basic concept of death can involve recognizing two things: an animal's usual living functions have stopped, and that change is permanent. Researchers call those ideas non-functionality and irreversibility. That's a smaller claim than understanding that every living being will die, including yourself. Their account is an argument about what might count as understanding death, rather than an experiment establishing what every species knows. I like the distinction because it lets us ask a question an animal might actually be able to answer through its behavior.
It also gives us room to think about emotional loss separately. Missing a familiar companion and having a fully developed explanation of what happened to them don't have to arrive together. We can take a change in behavior seriously while still wondering what the animal understands about the cause. I keep coming back to how much we demand from the word “know.” Sometimes we use it to mean recognizing something very specific, and other times we're asking for an entire philosophy of existence, preferably with supporting notes. That's a considerable amount to hide inside one small question.
The Mirror Test Answers a Smaller Question
The mirror test often appears in conversations about this, because it asks whether an animal uses a reflection to investigate a mark on its own body. In a 2006 study of three Asian elephants, researchers Joshua Plotnik, Frans de Waal, and Diana Reiss reported that one elephant, Happy, touched the visible mark on her head while at the mirror. It's an interesting result about recognizing the relationship between a reflection and one's body. The test doesn't ask whether an animal understands death, and recognizing yourself in a mirror doesn't establish that you anticipate your own eventual death.
I find the leap between those two ideas pretty enormous, even though I understand why they end up in the same conversation. I can use a mirror to locate something embarrassing on my face without gaining any particular wisdom about the rest of my life. For an animal, a mirror task is one piece of a much larger discussion about cognition, with the details of the task still attached. Turning it into a universal intelligence exam makes the question sound much tidier than it is. I'd rather keep looking at what different animals actually do, especially when those observations surprise us.
Elephants Really Do Investigate the Remains of Other Elephants
In research published in Biology Letters, Karen McComb, Lucy Baker, and Cynthia Moss presented free-ranging African elephants with different objects and remains. The elephants showed particular interest in elephant skulls and ivory compared with other objects, including the skulls of other large mammals. That gives us something much more specific than a moving photograph with a confident caption underneath it. The study found an attraction to remains of their own species, but it didn't find that elephants preferentially selected the skull of their own deceased matriarch over those of other matriarchs.
That last detail changes the familiar story about elephants deliberately visiting a relative's grave. It doesn't make their interest unimportant, and it certainly doesn't tell us that an elephant feels nothing. It means we should keep the finding attached to what was actually tested. I still find the attention to old remains fascinating, especially because we're talking about something that looks very different from a living elephant. The moment is worth considering without requiring every trunk movement to stand for exactly the same thing it would mean if we were standing there.
Chimpanzees Give Us Some Very Difficult Moments to Watch
A 2010 report by James Anderson, Alasdair Gillies, and Louise Lock described an elderly female chimpanzee dying while members of her group were nearby. The researchers recorded care before her death, inspection of the body, behavior they interpreted as testing for signs of life, and her adult daughter's remaining nearby through the night. There was also aggression toward the body and later avoidance of the place where she died. It's a complicated account, with several different responses, rather than one gentle scene we can easily label and put away. The observations show that the death mattered to the group's behavior; they leave open questions about each individual's understanding.
Primate mothers carrying dead infants raise another difficult question. A 2021 comparative study gathered 409 published reports of mothers' responses to infant deaths across 50 primate species. Carrying was more likely following non-traumatic deaths than traumatic ones, and its occurrence and duration varied with factors including maternal and infant age. The researchers considered several possible explanations rather than treating carrying as a direct reading of a mother's mind. Holding a body doesn't, by itself, tell us whether the mother believes the infant can recover, recognizes the death while continuing contact, or is responding through some combination of attachment and other processes.
Crow Gatherings Can Also Be About Learning Where Danger Is
Crows gathering around a dead crow are often described as holding a funeral. In experiments published in 2015, Kaeli Swift and John Marzluff found that American crows responded to dead crows with mobbing and greater hesitation around food in associated locations. They could also learn to recognize people who had been near a dead crow or a predator. The results support a role for learning about danger. That's quite different from the claim that these gatherings have no survival benefit, or that every bird present is taking part in a mourning ceremony.
Of course the crows would find a way to make an already interesting subject more complicated. I have a real soft spot for an animal that can watch what happens around it and apparently decide that a particular person requires further supervision. That's my slightly affectionate description of the learning, rather than a translation of what a crow is thinking. The important point is that a dead animal can carry information about the living world around it. A response can involve attention, learning, alarm, or several things at once, even when the scene looks familiar enough that we immediately reach for a word like funeral.
Dogs Bring the Question Much Closer to Home
A 2022 study surveyed 426 Italian dog owners who'd experienced one dog dying while another remained in the household. Owners reported changes in the surviving dogs' play, sleep, eating, and fearfulness, with aspects of those changes associated with the relationship between the dogs. The researchers described grief-related patterns, while also discussing the owners' emotions and changes in the household. Since the information came from owners' reports, the study couldn't directly establish what the dogs understood about death. It does give us a reason to take changes after the loss of a companion seriously.
This is the part where my feelings about Riesling make me especially aware of how tempting it is to fill in the blanks. I can care deeply about a dog while admitting that I don't have a transcript of his thoughts, and I want that same care to extend to animals whose expressions are less familiar to me. A change in appetite or activity deserves attention on its own terms. If a pet changes noticeably after a loss, a veterinarian can help assess what may be happening, including illness or pain, instead of everything automatically being explained as grief.
Knowing About Danger Still Leaves the Biggest Question Open
An animal avoiding a threat tells us something about its response to that situation. It doesn't, on its own, establish the much larger belief that death will eventually happen to it regardless of which dangers it manages to escape. That distinction is central to why the question remains difficult. The studies above examine particular encounters, choices, and changes in behavior; they don't give us a general demonstration that animals contemplate their own unavoidable mortality. They also don't settle the question for every animal, in every circumstance, in the opposite direction.
I realize that's less satisfying than a dramatic yes or no, but I think the differences are where this becomes interesting. We can ask whether an animal notices that a body is unresponsive, whether it changes its expectations after repeated encounters, or whether a lost relationship affects how it spends its days. Those are already substantial questions. Adding a requirement that the animal also spend an afternoon considering the end of its own existence could cause us to overlook the understanding sitting right in front of us. I'd rather leave the largest question open than make all the smaller ones disappear inside it.
Kindness Doesn’t Need to Wait for an Answer About Mortality
Conscious experience is another question again. The 2024 New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness states that there is strong scientific support for conscious experience in other mammals and birds, and a realistic possibility in a wider range of animals. Its signatories argue that such possibilities should be considered in decisions affecting welfare. It's a declaration by individual researchers and other experts, rather than proof that animals understand death. What I find useful is the emphasis on the animal's experience, because that gives the ethical conversation somewhere to begin while the more difficult questions remain open.
For me, an animal's ability to experience pain or distress is already a reason to care about how it's treated. That is an ethical judgment, and I don't need to disguise it as a laboratory result. I also occassionally wonder why we're so eager to turn intelligence into an entrance requirement for compassion. A creature shouldn't need to impress me with a puzzle, recognize itself in a mirror, or perform an understandable version of grief before I consider its welfare. Curiosity about its mind can sit alongside that responsibility without becoming a test it has to pass first.
The Food Conversation Belongs Here Too
That responsibility extends beyond the animals who share our homes. In its 2022 scientific opinion on cattle transport, the European Food Safety Authority identified welfare concerns including handling stress, heat stress, injuries, prolonged hunger, and thirst. Those are specific problems that can be investigated and reduced without first resolving whether a cow understands the destination of a journey. We can discuss handling, space, temperature, and journey duration in terms of their effects on animals. That keeps the conversation connected to conditions we can actually change, rather than requiring a guess about the thoughts of every animal on a truck.
I work around food and wine, and I don't want that part of my life to make the animal disappear from the discussion. Food can be beautiful, culturally important, comforting, and still involve decisions worth examining. I think we can talk honestly about those decisions without inventing a cow's inner monologue or pretending that one reassuring label answers every welfare question. I'd want to know what the standards cover and what happens in practice. My fondness for a particular meal doesn't give me special access to an animal's mind, and it doesn't remove my interest in how that animal was treated.
Care at the End of Life Is About the Animal in Front of Us
For companion animals, end-of-life care brings these questions into a very personal setting. Veterinary guidelines from the American Animal Hospital Association and the International Association for Animal Hospice and Palliative Care emphasize comfort, relief of suffering, and a supportive partnership with the caregiver. Those are practical goals to discuss with a veterinarian who knows the animal. A photograph of a relaxed animal can't tell us whether it understands death, and stillness alone doesn't establish comfort, acceptance, or freedom from pain. The animal's condition and needs deserve a fuller assessment than a peaceful-looking image can provide.
I think there's something very caring about admitting that we don't know exactly what an animal understands and still doing the work of helping it feel as comfortable as possible. That can mean asking questions, getting professional guidance, and being willing to adjust what we think the animal needs. It doesn't require a story about animals having a wiser or more peaceful relationship with death than we do. Their lives are their own, and I want to leave room for that, including the possibility that their experience is both meaningful and unfamiliar to me.
So do animals know they'll die? Some show responses that have led researchers to consider varying degrees of death understanding, while awareness of one's own inevitable death remains a much harder claim to establish. I come away from the question with a greater interest in the details, including the elephant inspecting remains, the crow learning about danger, and the dog whose household has changed. Each gives us a different part of the problem to think about, and none needs to carry the entire answer. I can keep wondering what those experiences are like while being very clear that how we treat the animal matters right now.
A soft dog bed would be a very welcome spot for Riesling beside wherever we’re sitting. I like the idea of giving her a familiar place to curl up while the ordinary evening carries on around her.
Related Reads from the Archive
Why Birds Sing Before Storms: The Secret Symphony of Survival
Why the Tuna You’re Eating Might Be Closer to Extinct Than You Think
The Hidden Violence in Our Food Chain (Even When It’s Vegan)
Sources
Monsó and Osuna-Mascaró, Death is common, so is understanding it (2020/2021)
Plotnik, de Waal and Reiss, Self-recognition in an Asian elephant (2006)
McComb, Baker and Moss, Elephant interest in skulls and ivory (2006)
Fernández-Fueyo and colleagues, Primate mothers and infant corpse carrying (2021)
Swift and Marzluff, Wild American crows gather around their dead to learn about danger (2015)
Uccheddu and colleagues, Domestic dogs and loss of a companion (2022)
AAHA/IAAHPC, End-of-life care guidelines: the end-of-life event
