HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you think elephants have spiritual thought?

16 points by dj_mc_merlin ↗ HN
If deliberate burials are signposts of the belief in life after death for humans, one cannot ignore the elaborate burying behavior of elephants as a similar sign of ritualistic or even religious be- havior in that species (Siegel, 1977c). When en- countering dead animals, elephants will often bury them with mud, earth, and leaves. Animals known to have been buried by elephants include rhinos, buffalos, cows, calves, and even humans, in addi- tion to elephants themselves (Douglas-Hamilton & Douglas-Hamilton, 1975, pp. 240ff.). Etholo- gists have observed elephants burying their dead with large quantities of food, fruit, flowers, and colorful foliage.

- https://web.archive.org/web/20181118164741/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f425/35b88e8e463117d8a54b70cd02f55f85f3a4.pdf

I've read this and can't stop thinking of the implications. Burying somebody with large amounts of potentially useful food makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective. Perhaps the elephants have weird reasons for doing this behaviour, but the simplest explanation does seem to be that they have some spiritual belief analogous to humans.

12 comments

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codetrotter
> Ronald K. Siegel writes that: "...one cannot ignore the elaborate burying behaviour of elephants as a similar sign of ritualistic or even religious behaviour in that species. When encountering dead animals, elephants will often bury them with mud, earth and leaves. Animals known to have been buried by elephants include rhinos, buffalos, cows, calves, and even humans, in addition to elephants themselves. Elephants have [been] observed burying their dead with large quantities of food, fruit, flowers and colourful foliage."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_behavior_in_animal...

Wow! I never knew this about the elephants.

Thank you for sharing.

Yes, perhaps some elephants are religious.

layer8
Maybe they are just cargo-culting humans? ;)
adyashakti
there are many stories from india about spiritual and religious behavior of elephants, especially the elephants trained for and used in temple processions. i have observed spiritual behaviours in many animals including cows, cats and others.
beardyw
It is also possible that they share our understanding that looking dead and being dead are not necessarily the same thing. In that case leaving food would make sense. As I understand it the burying mostly involves covering with branches and leaves. Again, perfect sense if they might recover, by providing camouflage. Perhaps they need to move on but want to give the maybe not quite dead the best possible chance. Transferring that behaviour towards other animals is not such a stretch.
berkeshire
Elephants have gratitude, can sense human death, and can mourn their human protector and friend.

That is spiritual in a way. Or more spiritual than many humans.

Sources: 1: https://www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/saying-goodbye-elephants-hol... 2: https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news/story/elephant-pays-...

matt_s
Those are emotions. Having and expressing emotions doesn't mean they have thoughts about an abstract thing like a spirit.
foxandmouse
How are emotions not an expression of abstract thought? I think we're limited in our understanding of consciousness, which is what makes me so excited for Ai.
dhruvkar
Or (the devil's advocate) question is:

Is human behavior in this case more animal-like?

Our tendency of burying our dead might have a more primal origin rather than a spiritual one?

aristofun
Elephants are smart. Bury a dead body is a smart move, at least sanitary-wise. No room for spirituality here (even if they are spiritual). Case closed.
VoodooJuJu
Akshyually it's science! The neurochemical impulses of the loxodonta anonymous compel them to smother the rotting flesh of their deceased members in order to abate insect-borne viruses and prion diseases. It's an evolutionarily ingrained sanitization ritual. I fucking love science!
sethammons
My teenager proposed the idea of spirituality in animals to me just the other day. It never occurred to me to even consider the thought. All the time, we find there is less and less human exceptionalism. I'm more and more convinced that we need to find evidence that animals are explicitly non-human in a given aspect as opposed to the alternative.

We've gone from believing physical is pain not experienced by animals to realizing that rats mourn the loss of a mate. Why do we think only humans can have spiritual experiences?

My proposed experiment: scan animals for delta brain waves. We see those in humans during meditation and can apparently force delta waves whereby patients report spiritual feelings.