THE EMOTION OF GRIEF IN ANIMALS 



GREEK fancy personified grief lasting and unconsolable 

 in the metamorphosis of Philomel into the night- 

 ingale, bewailing the loss of Itys through ages of 

 midnight melody. Keats, in a more modern, though 

 no less classical, vein, sees in the nightingale's note 

 nothing more suggestive of sorrow than Shelley did 

 in that of the skylark. But fancy and allusion apart, 

 there is a strong balance of popular belief in favour 

 of the theory that many animals do feel an emotion 

 more lasting than momentary chagrin or inconvenience 

 in the loss or absence of those for whom they 

 entertain a regard, and that in some cases this is 

 so marked as to rank with the degrees of regret, 

 sorrow and lasting grief, felt by human beings in 

 similar conditions. 



The intellectual factors which play a part, and a 

 necessary part, in the emotion of sorrow, are possessed 

 by most animals. Memory, without which lasting 

 regret cannot exist unless excited by some concrete 



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