Elephants and animal grief

Been on an elephant kick lately with these  NatGeo: "Orphaned Baby Elephants" – nice short video   and  More on elephants!

And now this:

From a new book, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel:

A researcher once played a recording of an elephant who had died. The sound was coming from a speaker hidden in a thicket. The family went wild calling, looking all around. The dead elephant’s daughter called for days afterward. The researchers never again did such a thing.

& more –

Elephants sometimes cover dead elephants with soil and vegetation, making them, as far as I’m aware, the only other animals who sometimes perform simple burials. Elephants have done the same when humans are involved on several recorded occasions. When sport hunters shot a large male elephant his companions surrounded his carcass. The hunters returned hours later to find that the others had not only covered their dead comrade with soil and leaves—they had covered his large head-wound with mud.

I got this in a link from the Ann Althouse weblog; she had linked to this -  Carl Safina on Animal Grief