support

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lionesses baby-sit for one another just as house cats sometimes do. . . . 

Elephants appear to make allowances for other members of their herd. 

One African herd always traveled slowly because one of its members 

had never fully recovered from a broken leg suffered as a calf. 

 

A park warden reported coming across a herd with a female 

carrying a small calf several days dead, which she placed on the ground

 whenever she ate or drank: she traveled very slowly and 

the rest of the elephants waited for her. . . . 

 

There appears to be so little survival value in the behavior of this herd,

 that perhaps one has to believe that they behaved this way 

just because they loved their grieving friend who loved her dead baby, 

and wanted to support her.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy

from When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals