Playing possum : how animals understand death / Susana Monsó.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Monsó, Susana, 1988- author.

Standardized Title:

Zarigüeya de Schrödinger. English

Language:

English

Spanish

Subjects (All):

Animals--Mortality.

Animals.

Animal psychology.

Perception in animals.

Animal behavior.

Physical Description:

xii, 243 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"A philosophical exploration of what animal behavior reveals about their understanding of death, as well as our own"-- Provided by publisher.

"How animals conceive of death and dying-and what they can teach us about our own relationships with mortalityWhen the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralyzed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse. Playing Possum explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us about how we and other species understand mortality, and demonstrates that the concept of death, far from being a uniquely human attribute, is widespread in the animal kingdom.With humor and empathy, Susana Monsó tells the stories of ants who attend their own funerals, chimpanzees who clean the teeth of their dead, dogs who snack on their caregivers, crows who avoid the places where they saw a carcass, elephants obsessed with collecting ivory, and whales who carry their dead for weeks. Monsó, one of today's leading experts on animal cognition and ethics, shows how there are more ways to conceive of mortality than the human way, and challenges the notion that the only emotional reactions to death worthy of our attention are ones that resemble our own.Blending philosophical insight with new evidence from behavioral science and comparative psychology, Playing Possum dispels the anthropocentric biases that cloud our understanding of the natural world, and reveals that, when it comes to death and dying, we are just another animal"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: The Silence of the Chimps

The Ant who Attended her Own Funeral

The Whale who Carried her Baby Across Half the World

The Ape who Played House with Corpses

The Dog who Mistook his Human for a Snack

The Elephant who Collected Ivory

The Opossum who Was Both Dead and Alive

Conclusion: The Animal who Brought Flowers to the Dead.

Notes:

Translated from the Spanish.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Monsó, Susana, 1988- Playing possum

ISBN:

9780691260761

0691260761

OCLC:

1417393924