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
