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“After a while, the human caretakers called the chimpanzees to the feeding building and most of them left the place where the body lay, with the exception of two females, mother and daughter, who remained next to the corpse. The mother, who had had an especially close relationship with the deceased, carefully examined his face and then grabbed a grass stem and began to clean his teeth. She spent several minutes engaged in this task, all the while remaining under her daughter’s attentive gaze.”

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Book:Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death
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“There are descriptions of self-mutilations in animals who are locked up in zoos, as well as in laboratory rodents who have been administered stimulating drugs. Cases have also been reported in domestic animals. Some horses, for instance, have shown a tendency to bite themselves, as well as kick and lunge at objects. Among cats and dogs it’s also relatively common to see compulsive self-licking, nibbling, or scratching, which in extreme cases can result in serious injuries… Somewhat more suggestive cases are of dolphins who have supposedly ended their own lives. At least two cases have been reported, both occurring in dolphins who were captured from the wild and held captive in inadequate conditions. One is dolphin Kathy, the “actor” who portrayed Flipper for the longest period of time on the TV series of the same name. The other is Peter, a dolphin from the 1960s led by John Lilly, which involved the psychedelic drug LSD, zoophilia, and attempts on behalf of the experimenters to communicate verbally and telepathically with the dolphins. Both Kathy and Peter ended their own lives by voluntarily stopping breathing, according to the witnesses.”

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Book:Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death
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“We also don’t like to see ourselves as the predators we are. The carcasses that city dwellers in the Global North consume come packaged in hygienic containers without a drop of blood, cut into neat little pieces so that they don’t remind us too much of the animal to which they once belonged. Slaughterhouses are in the outskirts of neighborhoods, conveniently hidden from our view. We eat ham, pork, beef, instead of the remains of an animal who once lived, breathed, felt.”

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Book:Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death
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“Not only this- the mirror test also presupposes that the tested animals care about their appearance in one way or another, for something like this is necessary for them to have the motivation to interact with the mark that has been placed on them. However, it’s not immediately clear that other animals are vain enough to care about their own looks.”

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Book:Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death
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