Nov. 4, 2005 — Elephants pay homage to the bones of their dead, gently touching the skulls and tusks with their trunks and feet, according to the first systematic study of elephant empathy for the dead.

The finding provides the first hard evidence to support stories of elephant mourning, in which the pachyderms are said to congregate at elephant cemeteries, drawn by the bones of their kin.

It also shows that these animals display a trait once thought to be unique to humans, said Karen McComb, an expert on animal communication and cognition at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England.

"Most mammals show only passing interest in the dead remains of their own or other species," McComb and colleagues wrote in the current issue of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Lions are typical in this respect: they briefly sniff or lick a dead of their own species before starting to devour the body. Chimpanzees show more prolonged and complex interactions with dead social partners, but leave them once the carcass starts decomposing.

"In comparison, African elephants are reported not only to exhibit unusual behaviors on encountering the bodies of dead con-specifics, becoming highly agitated and investigating them with the trunk and feet, but also to pay considerable attention to the skulls, ivory and associated bones of elephants that are long dead," said the researchers.

To investigate the unusual behavior, McComb's team studied families of elephants living in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya.

In each test, they presented the animals with a choice of three objects. These were placed 25 to 30 meters (82 to 100 feet) away from the nearest elephant, their location (left, center, right) systematically varied. The elephant reaction was then observed and video recorded from a distance.

In the first experiment, 19 different family groups were presented with an elephant skull, a piece of ivory and a piece of wood. The animals showed a strong preference for the ivory, and for the skull over the wood.

Preference for ivory was very marked, even though it was the smallest object on offer. Elephants placed their feet — which have a sense of feeling — on the ivory and rocked it gently back and forth.

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