There are lots of stories about elephants visiting the bones of their dead. Are these stories anything more than legends?

There are documented accounts by scientists of elephants' interest in the bodies of their dead. Multiple teams of researchers on 32 separate occasions have reported observing elephants visit their dead. In 2019 a team of American researchers added their own observation at the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya.

They found that elephants show interest in the bodies of their own dead, but never those of other large animals like rhinos or buffalo. They approach dead elephant bodies at all stages of decay, from freshly dead to scattered sun-bleached bones. They examine the body or bones carefully with their highly sensitive trunks and acute small.

Their behavior towards these remains looks like some of their interactions with living herd-mates. They sometimes show heightened social interactions with other elephants in the vicinity of the carcass and can appear subdued or agitated.

Elephants are very intelligent animals with complex social groups and huge brains.  For an animal that lives only in the present, death is just absence. Out of sight is out of mind. But, if elephants have memories of the past and can imagine the future, then they might be able to grasp the permanence of death, and they might be grieving for their dead.

That’s a big part of the reason why this behavior is so intriguing to scientists.  It might indicate highly sophisticated cognitive abilities.  It will take more research about elephants’ behavior at corpses and elsewhere to tell for sure.

Reviewer: Nicola Clayton, the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Sources and Further Reading

• Goldenberg, S. Z. (2020). Elephant behavior toward the dead: A review and insights from field observations. Primates. 61: 119-128.
• Jabr, F. Searching For The Elephant's Genius Inside the Largest Brain on Land. Scientific American, February 26, 2014.