Grief in Dolphins

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Behavior
Death
Brain
Edward Hessler

Evidence from Jane Goodall supports the hypothesis that chimpanzees experience grief. Behavior that scientists describe as grief-like has been known in dolphins for years.


Virginia Morell, writing for Science, reports on an analysis of 78 scientific reports on grief-like behavior in dolphins published between 1970 and 2016. She provides a link to the study as well as to a film showing a striped dolphin in the Mediterranean Sea "pushing, nudging, and circling the carcass of its dead female companion for more than an hour," which stilled a nearby boat of scientists to silence as they watched.

The question remains open on whether dolphins experience the feeling of grief.