Wildlife film makers will often capture moments on camera that make us question whether animals understand death and loss. Perhaps you’ve got first-hand experience of this, a dog waiting by the door of an owner who has passed away, or a pet who seems more withdrawn since the death of their companion. Do animals understand death? 

It’s a question that scientists have been taking seriously for a while now, and the answer is more interesting than a simple yes or no.  

A whole field of science just for this question 

There’s a name for the scientific study of how animals respond to death, comparative thanatology. Researchers in this field watch how different species (from ants to chimpanzees) behave around dying or dead members of their own kind.  

For a long time, scientists assumed that understanding death was a uniquely human skill, one that needs complicated thinking. But newer research is challenging that idea. 

Philosopher and cognition researcher Susan Monsό, who has written extensively on this topic, argues that grasping the basics of death might not require nearly as much brainpower as we once thought (Monsó and Osuna-Mascaró, 2021). 

So, what exactly would an animal need to understand? Researchers usually break the “concept of death” down into a few simple ideas: 

  • Non-functionality: A dead body doesn’t move, eat or breathe anymore. 
  • Irreversibility: Once something is dead, it isn’t coming back. 
  • Universality: Everything that is alive will die eventually  

We don’t know if any species besides us really grasps the Universality part, but it seems reasonable to assume that you don’t need language or human-level reasoning to notice the first two. 

Animals that seem to “get it” 

Some of the clearest examples come from animals with complex social lives. 

Elephants are famous for their reactions to death 

They’ve been seen standing quietly around a dead herd member, gently touching the body with their trunks and returning to the same place on later visits. Some researchers think this reflects a real recognition that something significant has happened, not just curiosity (Gonçalves and Biro, 2018).  

Chimpanzees have shown similar behaviour 

In one well-known case, researchers working with a chimpanzee who had learned some sign language told her that her baby, who had been unwell, had died. She responded with a sign for “baby”, and when told the baby was gone, she visibly slumped and moved away, seemingly withdrawing into herself. Wild chimpanzees have also been observed carrying and grooming the bodies of dead infants for days, sometimes even after the body has started to decompose, which suggests they may take time to fully register what has happened.  

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Magpies and crows are known for complex behaviour 

In particular, they may gather around a dead member of their group, sometimes making loud calls, in what scientists have nicknamed a “funeral”. It’s not fully understood why they do this, but one idea is that it helps them learn about danger in the area. 

Orcas have also drawn attention for this kind of behaviour 

Mother orcas have been seen carrying their dead calves for days, sometimes over huge distances, refusing to let go (Cappiello, 2025). 

None of these examples proves that animals feel exactly what we feel about death. But they do suggest that many species notice death, respond to it, and change their behaviour because of it. Even if their understanding isn’t the same as ours, they do demonstrate a meaningful form of understanding.  

What about our pets? 

For years, “grief” in pets was treated as more of a comforting story than a scientific fact. But that could be starting to change. 

In 2022, a study of over 400 dog owners in Italy found that 86% saw negative changes in their surviving dog’s behaviour after a companion dog died (Uccheddu et al., 2022). Owners reported dogs becoming more clingy, playing less, eating less, and appearing more fearful. Interestingly, the dogs most affected tended to be the ones who’d had a close, friendly relationship with the dog who died, and the effect was stronger when the owner was visibly grieving too, hinting that dogs may be picking up on our distress as well as processing their own.    

Cats haven’t been studied quite as much, but the evidence we do have points the same way. Surveys of owners with multiple pets report changes in affection, appetite, vocalisation, and territorial behaviour in surviving animals after a companion’s death, in both cats and dogs (Walker, Waran and Phillips, 2016). Most of these changes settle down within a couple of months, though some can last longer. 

Does this prove cats and dogs understand death the way we do? We still don’t know. What it does show is that losing a companion can be disruptive to an animal’s wellbeing, whether or not we call it “grief” in the human sense. 

What this means for animal welfare 

If a surviving pet is acting differently after losing a companion, it’s not something to dismiss. This change in their emotional state may mean they need some extra patience, comfort, and in some cases, a chat with a vet to rule out anything else going on. 

It also shapes how we think about welfare more broadly, in shelters, on farms, and in the wild. If many animals do have some grasp of death and loss, that’s one more reason to take their emotional experiences seriously across the board. 

So, do animals understand death? 

The evidence-based answer is that some of them, in some ways, they may well do, even if it isn’t identical to our human understanding, and even though we can never fully know what’s going on inside another creature’s mind. 

What the research increasingly points to is that recognising death, and being affected by it, isn’t a rare trait limited to humans. It may be a much more ordinary part of being a social animal than we once assumed. 

References: 

Cappiello, J. (2025) “Tour of Grief” Orca Seen Carrying Second Dead Calf for Over 11 Days, World Animal Protection US. Available at: https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/latest/blogs/tour-of-grief-orca-seen-carrying-second-dead-calf-for-over-11-days/ (Accessed: 1 July 2026). 

Gonçalves, A. and Biro, D. (2018) ‘Comparative thanatology, an integrative approach: exploring sensory/cognitive aspects of death recognition in vertebrates and invertebrates’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373(1754), p. 20170263. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0263. 

Monsó, S. and Osuna-Mascaró, A.J. (2021) ‘Death is common, so is understanding it: the concept of death in other species’, Synthese, 199(1–2), pp. 2251–2275. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02882-y. 

Uccheddu, S. et al. (2022) ‘Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) grieve over the loss of a conspecific’, Scientific Reports, 12(1), p. 1920. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-05669-y. 

Walker, J., Waran, N. and Phillips, C. (2016) ‘Owners’ Perceptions of Their Animal’s Behavioural Response to the Loss of an Animal Companion’, Animals, 6(11), p. 68. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/ani6110068. 

Further reading: 

Do Pets Grieve and How? | Morris Animal Foundation 

Monsó, S. (2024) Playing possum: how animals understand death. Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press.