*Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death*

That’s Susana Monsó’s upcoming book, and I found it fascinating and enlightening. Here is one episode:

This facial adjustment suggests that Firuláis’ original motive was probably not to eat his own person, but rather that this behavior began as an attempt to get him to react. Our face is the part of our body that our canine friends pay the most attention to, because it is the key to understanding our emotions and communicating with us. As a result, it is expected that Firuláis, when he saw his caretaker lying motionless after the gunshot, began to try to get a reaction from him by moving his face with his nose. When there was no response, and to hold himself down or just out of frustration, he might have started to lick, gnaw, and when the blood was drawn the temptation to take a little might be strong. That is to say, it is possible that Firuláis’s love for his guardian and his grief at his lack of response were at the root of his behavior.

Talk about a “model for this”! A comparative system of thanatology, of course. You can pre-order here.



Source link