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My personal opinion (which is I think at least loosely supported by research into animal vs. human memory) is that relative to humans, animals are very grounded

My personal opinion (which is I think at least loosely supported by research into animal vs. human memory) is that relative to humans, animals are very grounded in the present so they grieve much differently. When a human's loved one dies, we miss them in the present moment... but we are also thinking of the past and future. We think of our days ahead without them and mourn the happy times in the past that can now not be repeated. It was surprisingly hard to find a scientific consensus on this topic. There's no real objective way to measure feelings, particularly in animals. Even in humans, you usually just have to ask the subject how they're feeling. Behavior changes are at best kind of a decent proxy for making... educated guesses instead of uneducated guesses into an animal's feelings. We could measure things like oxytocin and cortisol levels or take fMRIs, but good luck collecting those metrics without profoundly altering the animal's emotional state.

dpig_ 2y ago
That's a really good point. I think it's even possible that my personal experience of lack/grief/loss is 0% present-moment and 100% reflective. Noting of course that this includes reflection on the super-recent past / future.
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  I think that feels very very true for me and probably for most people as well. I of course grieved mightily when my mom died. Even though it made nearly zero practical difference in my present life at that point. I was grieving the loss of things past, and of the future - I would not see her in the future, and I also greatly grieved that she would no longer be able to do the things that she loved so much in the future. Subtract all that past and all that future, and what's left? I think that's where most animals are at... there is much common ground, and they clearly feel emotions as strongly as we do, but they experience the world so differently.

dpig_ 2y ago

That's a really good point. I think it's even possible that my personal experience of lack/grief/loss is 0% present-moment and 100% reflective. Noting of course that this includes reflection on the super-recent past / future.

JohnBooty 2y ago
I think that feels very very true for me and probably for most people as well. I of course grieved mightily when my mom died. Even though it made nearly zero practical difference in my present life at that point. I was grieving the loss of things past, and of the future - I would not see her in the future, and I also greatly grieved that she would no longer be able to do the things that she loved so much in the future. Subtract all that past and all that future, and what's left? I think that's where most animals are at... there is much common ground, and they clearly feel emotions as strongly as we do, but they experience the world so differently.