Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

PLAYING POSSUM: How Animals Understand Death by Susana Monsó. Princeton University Press, 2024 (English Translation). 264 pages including index. Hardcover; 19. 94. ISBN: 9780691260761. *Modern, and particularly Western, humanity seems to regard death and mortality with deep ambivalence. On the one hand, there is the tendency to excessively dwell on it, marked by an obsession for safety and frenetically risk-proofing life as much as possible. On the other hand, both human and nonhuman death is sanitized, with human mortality a near-taboo to even ponder. In theological scholarship, there is renewed interest, and several new titles published, in what is often termed the "Problem of Animal Suffering, " as well as philosophical and psychological interest in the cognitive processes of animals. Susana Monsó, philosopher and associate professor at National Distance Education University (UNED) in Madrid, has provided new insights that bridge these issues with her recent book on the capacity of animals to understand death. Written for a general audience, it is engaging, mostly avoids excessively technical language, uses endnotes to improve readability, and is marked by humor, and clear compassion and empathy for the animal subjects she addresses. Each chapter begins with a narrative about the approach to death of specific animal species that frame her subsequent argument. *Monsó's intention, as a philosopher, is to contribute to the field of comparative thanatology--the study of animals' relation to death--by framing this book within "a relatively young branch of philosophy known as the philosophy of animal minds" (p. 4). She argues that prior scholarship that largely denies the capacity of animals to understand death is based on anthropocentric biases excessively focused on grief, and she uses empirical evidence that many animals, at varying levels, do possess an understanding of death. *The author compares the responses to death in animals as either stereotypical (innate, automatic, rigid, linked to concrete sensory stimuli) or cognitive (learned, under cognitive control, flexible, not linked to concrete sensory stimuli) ; these responses can vary among individuals. The former is widespread in nature, such as in ants who carry their dead outside the colony. The latter is Monsó's principal interest. She (correctly, I think) negatively critiques the anecdotal nature of published studies that often lack experimental controls and base their conclusions on a single animal sample, because "the anecdotal method is the one that most favors anthropomorphism" (p. 44). The press accounts, in the author's narrative of a whale who was said to "grieve" the loss of her dead calf while carrying its corpse for seventeen days, also illustrate this. Monsó contends that anthropomorphism can err both in an anthropocentric view that would seek to diminish the cognitive capacity of animals, or in the opposite view, one that would deny that any human-typical characteristics can be found in animals at all. *Monsó is also critical of the intellectual error that adopts the "human experience as the gold standard against which we compare all animal behavior around death" (p. 51). That an animal does not conceive of death as a human would, does not mean that they lack a cognizance of death. Rather, many animals can intellectually understand nonfunctionality and irreversibility as the "minimal concept of death" (p. 76). And, as mentioned before, an anthropocentric focus on grief in animals' understanding of death, Monsó argues, diminishes the genuine role of animal emotions in how they process death, causing us to misinterpret their varied, unique responses. *A concept of death in nature, according to Monsó, is a "holy trinity" of "three fundamental causal factors: COGNITION, EXPERIENCE, and EMOTION" (p. 109). Interestingly, she finds that the more "social" animals, who tend to have higher levels of all three, are also K-strategists, species who tend to have few offspring that require investment of huge amounts of parental care to reach maturity. This seems to suggest that the "costly" impact of an offspring's death makes a cognitive understanding of it an evolutionary benefit to species survival. That said, not all social animals meet the requirements of the "holy trinity, " such as insects that are highly social but cognitively simple. Nor do some non-social species, including large predators that are generally solitary, fail to meet these requirements. It serves as an interesting rubric to view how animals understand death, however. *Most readers will be fascinated by the penultimate chapter on violence in the animal kingdom as a force for how animals understand death, a topic that has previously been given scant academic attention. The discussion of predation is especially interesting. Predators understand that their killed prey are dead, and, in fact, view this death with great joy, not as a loss, but a gain, an emotion as powerful as that of the loss of a mother's young. Even animals who "play" with their prey, like cats, cognitively know when death occurs and what they did to accomplish it. Certainly, repeated hunts (and failures to kill prey) provide the experience to verify death. This experience, along with emotion and cognition, fulfills the three components of the "holy trinity. " *Here I found it easy to think of biblical allusions to God's delight in his provision of prey for his created animals and in the power and "wildness" of behemoth and leviathan in the Yahweh speech to the biblical Job. Humans, of course, are a predatory species, so, at the risk of reverse-anthropomorphism, I do wonder if the enjoyment of many humans in hunting and fishing is less a reflection of a loss of prelapsarian kindness than a connection we share with many animals, and one that has led to the continuation of our own species. *Monsó's work will appeal to those interested in ethology, and philosophers will like the consistency of her philosophical arguments. Science-oriented readers will appreciate her significant use of empirical evidence to reach conclusions. Monsó is to be applauded for the breadth of animal species she uses to illustrate her points, beyond primates and familiar pet animals to include, for example, whales and the opossum referenced in the title. *Christian readers may have a mixed response to this work, based on some of the author's concluding comments. Monsó makes scant mention of theological implications, except as they relate to anthropomorphism; in fairness, this was her intent. Those interested in theological anthropology will have some misgivings about her conclusions related to human death. Monsó correctly asserts that "we are probably the only animal with a notion of the inevitability and unpredictability of death" (p. 208) and "the only animal with complex death-related rituals and symbolic representations of death" (p. 207). But then she concludes, regarding the concept of death, "We're not a unique species. We're just another animal" (p. 210). In fact, despite a recognition that humans have underestimated the capacity for animals to understand death, our uniquely human conceptions of death, including the possibility of a continued existence in eternity, are inherently different from animals. The Resurrection and the view of death as a "defeated enemy" (1 Cor. 15: 26) are foundational to Christianity, and the imago Dei is a distinctive that makes human processing of death more than that of "another animal. " *That said, I suspect the author's intent is to broaden the reader's moral universe in respect and empathy for the animals who provide us food, labor, clothing, and companionship, and for all the animals who populate our natural environment. To this end, Monsó adds a valuable, entertaining, and elegant addition to the field of comparative thanatology. For a Christian, it does not threaten the uniquely human understanding of death to know that many animals also have their own understanding, often rather sophisticated. Instead, it provides the opportunity for even greater wonder and praise toward our Creator, in which the intricacy shown in "the work of His hands" (Ps. 111: 7) calls us to deeper care and compassion for the fauna we are called to steward. *Reviewed by Jerry L. Risser, senior medical director, Fall Creek Veterinary Medical Center, Indianapolis, IN 46256.