My advice for terminally ill Latinos like me

— You have options

By Jose Alejandro Lemuz

I am dying from prostate cancer that has spread to my bones.

But it’s comforting to know that I will likely soon die gently because I plan to use a medical aid-in-dying law championed by civil rights icon Dolores Huerta.

Thanks to the California End of Life Option Act, I will soon have the option to take a medication prescribed by my doctor that will allow me to die peacefully.

While I understand why my doctor wanted me to undergo more treatments, at this point in the rapid progression of the disease, the costs outweigh the benefits for me. Doctors should consult with patients about their care, not dictate it. Only I can determine how much suffering I can endure.

Less than three percent of the Californians who used the law in 2022 were Latinos, even though we represent 40% of the state’s population, and polling shows 68% of Hispanic Californians support medical aid in dying.

I suspect this disparity is because we have unequal access to this end-of-life care option because of healthcare system bias, cultural differences, and/or language barriers. I am a low-income body shop mechanic who does not speak English. My family doesn’t even have money for my burial.

Shamefully, I had to learn about this law through YouTube videos of a young Puerto Rican man, the late medical aid-in-dying advocate Miguel Carrasquillo, and TV news stories, instead of through my own doctors.

‘No More Treatment’

In December 2023, three months after trying to start the conversation about medical aid in dying with my healthcare team and after I had already endured numerous rounds of treatment since my diagnosis in 2018, I told my doctor:

“I don’t want any more treatment, I want you to respect my decision and I want you to help me. I’m asking that you declare me at the end stage because you’re the one who knows the treatment isn’t working for me anymore.”

I repeatedly asked my oncologist to estimate how long I have to live.

She declined to give me a prognosis. I showed my doctors a web page about this end-of-life care option to prompt the conversation with them.

They responded, “No, not yet…Keep taking more chemo.”

‘I Have Options’

I kept telling my doctors: “I have options.”

Why did my doctors not advise me about my healthcare options at the end of life, including my right to decline medical treatment for this incurable illness?

Hospice

For five years, I endured treatments to try to cure the cancer so I could work to provide for my two children and enjoy life.

Not anymore.

Last week [March 10], my doctors finally placed me in hospice care that focuses on alleviating some of the pain.

I am tired. I am weak. I have had a fever and convulsions for days. My frail and thin body can no longer withstand more than just a few steps.

Suffering is like being tortured.

Cancer consumes you little by little.

Unfortunately, the hospice care I am getting does not significantly reduce my suffering, so I will soon get the medication that will relieve me of this pain so I can die in peace.

I have spoken to God and asked Him to forgive my sins throughout my life.

I have talked to my children.

They understand and they support my decision.

They know it is my time to go.

Complete Article HERE!

All that is true about aging is illuminated on a walk

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I was out today in the early morning walking with a close friend of 64 years named Shelley Adams. Despite some huge losses over time, she is always overtly positive. I don’t normally like this in a person. I make a rare exception for her. We hike several times a week beside our local creek, now a twisting, flowing stream that rushes over rocks, mint and twigs.

Rainer Maria Rilke was only partially right when he wrote that “life holds you in its hands and will not let you fall,” because both Shelley and I, like all older people, have been dropped. But life also at some point pulls you back to your feet. What do you do in between, during times of loss or general dread? My friend Tom Weston, a Jesuit priest, always reminds me, “We do what’s possible.” I hate that.

Okay, fine: What is possible? The practical, simple and kind. We work, love and help others as best we can, gawk at nature, rest. Is that it? Pretty much.

This is a little disappointing, but age teaches us that kind, simple and practical are enough, even in the face of the worst things we’ve lived through: suicides, mental illness, odious leaders, sudden death. My friend Don was called one day by an aging and suicidal friend. His friend asked, “What is the point of it all?” After a moment, Don replied gently, “Mornings are nice.” And, wildly, it was enough. His friend improved.

I cannot hike the uphill trails here anymore because of my hip, so we do what’s possible: take four 10-minute laps back and forth along the creek. Everything that is true about aging appears to me on these walks.

On our first lap, Shelley and I catch up. We’ve always been talkers, readers, movie lovers. What was true about us at 6 years old is true about us now. We gossip, laugh a lot, quibble. We looked so similar as small kids, with green eyes and white-blonde hair. We still do. We’re built about the same. I’m a bit taller and smaller-boned, but otherwise we could be sisters. And like sisters, we can annoy each other, and weaponize silence. Families, sigh.

I grew up at her house. Her mother was my other mother, who saw how amazing I was on the inside, not just how much better I could be doing. Shelley and I went through childhood and puberty together, played competitive tennis for years as partners and then didn’t see each other much for 40 years. We raised kids, buried parents; sad, scary things have happened to us both, as they have to everyone by a certain age. Now, we’re slower, less busy, a bit goofy.

For instance, this morning, while searching for the word “coaster,” the closest I could come up with was “coffee pad.” She laughs so hard when I say this, she has to cross her legs, and then almost loses her balance.

By the second lap, our bodies have loosened up, and we talk a bit less and look around a lot more, and listen. The creek is the place where the water and the land are in constant conversation. My vision is often blurred by dry eye, but there is a grace to myopia: I’m less fixated.

We walked this morning in raincoats because it was drizzling off and on, even as the sun shone through faintly. In my family, we always announced during a sun shower that it must be a monkey’s birthday somewhere. In Akira Kurosawa’s “Dreams,” a mother tells her child, “The sun is shining through the rain. This is the time when foxes have their weddings.”

Like most old friends, we can bobble along without talking for stretches. I listen for the soft orchestral music of the woods on either side of the path. After scanning the illuminated green scrim of trees ahead and far away, I pull closer in on individual trees, all arms and elbows and long legs. The trees just stand around, as is their wont. The drizzle plays them. What instruments are they? Mostly woodwinds, maybe oboes, some flutier, and then dark, dark trees, like kettle drums, like patches of life.

Because we go back so far, Shelley and I know each other’s souls and shadows, and each other’s major screw-ups, and there is comfort in this. Also, we have made mistakes with each other that have felt like betrayals. This happens in families. We have gotten so mad that we have ditched each other on the trail and shouted to each other’s back, “Don’t you dare walk away from me.” Actually, that was only me. We take breaks, make up.

By the third lap, my hip has begun coughing quietly to get my attention. It would like to go home now. My vision is even more blurry because of the drizzle and thin light, added to the dry eyes. This is part of what it means for me to be alive still, the blinky vision. Paradoxically, I see more. Now, instead of sharp focus, there’s an appreciation of shifts in light that reveal the mutability of the world. The light sometimes changes minute by minute, and with it we perceive changes in the energy around us, above us, inside us. It moves our attention outside our squinty, judgy little selves.

We point out dark-eyed Oregon juncos to each other and finches, the males with their glorious red headdresses and chests, the females in their faded brown bathrobes. We talk about spiritual things and people we hate — as she puts it, “people we’re allergic to, bless their hearts.’” We talk about our scattered minds: This morning, I was struggling to read some tiny print in a book, and, without thinking, I touched the printed page to pinch it out and make it bigger. Eeesh, I thought: Scary! But I was gentle with myself about it.

My hip has really begun to ache by the final lap. We talk and limp along. Easily half of the people in our conversations have passed on, all four parents, both of her younger siblings, dearest friends. We know that death won’t be so hard. We’ve seen many people through the end of life. It’s never dramatic, like Snagglepuss staggering around onstage clutching his throat. It can be rough, and then one slips over gently to whatever awaits. My old pastor told me it is like going to bed on the living room floor and waking up in your own bed.

Age is giving me the two best gifts: softness and illumination. It would have been nice if whoever is in charge of such things doled them out in our younger years, but that’s not how it works. Age ferries them across the water, and they will bring us through whatever comes.

Complete Article HERE!

New Zealand’s ‘coffin clubs’ bury taboos about death

Kevin Heyward poses next to his Austin car coffin that he made at the Coffin Club’s workshop

By Ryland JAMES

It’s a task of grave importance, but there’s nothing to stop New Zealanders having a laugh as they work on DIY caskets in the country’s “coffin clubs”.

Elderly club members meet for cups of tea, a bit of banter, and to literally put the final nail in one-of-a-kind coffins that will carry them to their eternal resting place.

Kevin Heyward plans to be sent off in a box resembling a vintage Austin Healey.

Registration plate: DEAD1A.

Kevin Heyward’s Austin car coffin is fully equipped with a mock steering wheel, windscreen, rubber wheels, wooden mudguards, painted-on side doors, and wing mirrors

“My daughter came up with the idea,” the 79-year-old car enthusiast said with a grin, brushing sawdust off his overalls.

It’s fully equipped with a mock steering wheel, windscreen, rubber wheels with metal hub caps, wooden mudguards, a bonnet, painted-on side doors, and wing mirrors.

“The trickiest part was getting the mudguards lined up because of their curve,” Heyward told AFP at the workshop of the Hawke’s Bay Coffin Club in Hastings.

The hefty casket, which can be carried with six wooden handles, even has working headlights. The batteries, naturally, are currently dead.

“It weighs quite a bit and I’m a big man,” he said.

“I have said to my six grandsons they had better start weight-training, because they will be carrying it one day,” Heyward chuckled.

“There is a bit of humour in this car.”

The club is one of four that have sprung up around New Zealand, with the first opening in 2010 in Rotorua on the country’s North Island.

Some clubs boast as many as 800 people on their books, though one admitted “not all of them are above ground”.

At the Hastings club, Jim Thorne, a spritely 75-year-old motorcycle fan, used his skills as a cabinet maker to build a casket painted with a motorbike track. It’s stored in his garage, alongside a collection of motorbikes.

Thorne said most friends “are a little aghast and say ‘why are you doing that?'” when they hear about his coffin-making hobby. 

“Apart from the fact that I like the look of mine, it’s my input into my final days.”

– ‘Dying to get a coffin?’ –

“There is a certain mindset in some people that this is almost a taboo subject that they find very, very difficult to talk about,” Thorne said.

“They tend to overcome it. At the end of the day, it’s a reality of life, unfortunately.”

Elderly club members meet for cups of tea, a bit of banter, and to literally put the final nail in one-of-a-kind coffins

He breaks the ice with newcomers by asking: “Are you dying to get a coffin?”

But the club’s atmosphere is far from morbid.

Banter flows during the morning tea break as members chat over scones and hot drinks.

“We’re a bit unique, but we are happy. There are always lots of jokes,” said club secretary Helen Bromley.

Most members are seniors. The club provides a space to open up about death and dying during weekly meetups.

“I think everybody here has accepted that they are going to die, whether they’re decorating their coffin or helping others with theirs,” Bromley said.

“We’re a club that tries to empower people to plan their coffin, to plan what happens if they get sick.”

She said some members want to spare relatives the burden of meeting rising funeral costs. The club will also build and decorate coffins for grieving families. 

Coffin Club organiser Helen Bromley works on the lining of a coffin

On average, a funeral in New Zealand costs around NZ$10,000 (US$6,200), according to the national funeral directors association. 

Coffin prices range from NZ$1,200 to NZ$4,000.

– ‘Remember Me’ –

For a NZ$30 membership, the Hastings club gives each new member a pressed-wood coffin in one of three designs, ready to be decorated.

The coffins come in four sizes, each costing around NZ$700, extra for paint and a cloth lining.

During a tea break, Bromley announced that a member suffering from cancer was in intensive care after a fall. Her brother had asked the club to finish her coffin as a priority.

The club also builds ash boxes, which they sell to the local crematorium, and small coffins for infants, which they give away.

“The midwives and nurses at Hastings hospital have asked us to not ever, ever stop making the little coffins for them,” Bromley said.

“We donate to whoever. If there’s a miscarriage at home and they want a coffin, we donate.”

Members help knit blankets, teddy bears, pillows and hearts to go in the infants’ coffins.

Committee member Christina Ellison, 75, lost an infant daughter in 1968 and said she was comforted to know the club helps other families grieving the loss of a child. 

“The little baby coffins are so beautiful and done with so much care. The knitting that the ladies do is incredible,” she said.

Ellison is moving away soon and plans to take her coffin, which has been painted a blue-grey colour called “Remember Me”.

Complete Article HERE!

All pets go to heaven.

— She helps them do it at home.

Eden Gaines, left, talks with veterinarian Karen Meyers about the decision to euthanize Xochitl, a boxer-Great Dane mix who has cancer.

By

Veterinarian Karen Meyers pulls her black minivan into the driveway of a townhouse in Maryland’s National Harbor. The home, in a gated community, is perched on a windy bluff not far from restaurants, bars, a casino — places of revelry.

The vet carries her brown doctor’s bag inside. There, she meets her patient: Xochitl, known as Xochi, an 11-year-old boxer-Great Dane mix weighing around 80 pounds.

Xochi, recently diagnosed with cancer, is struggling. A film covers her right eye. She had been bleeding from her mouth, refusing to eat. Now she stands in the townhouse’s living room, mournfully greeting family members who have come to say goodbye.

Xochi climbs onto the living room’s leather couch and lies down. Owner Eden Gaines and her family gather around her. Meyers opens her bag.

Meyers explains the procedure. First, Xochi will be injected with a sedative to make her fall asleep. Five to 10 minutes later, Meyers will administer sodium pentobarbital, which will euthanize her. But Xochi would feel no pain, Meyers assures the family.

She asks whether anyone has any questions.

No one does.

“Here we go,” she says.

Meyers says she has euthanized 1,500 animals in four years.

Pet adoption spiked during the pandemic, with nearly 1 in 5 American households taking animals in and spending far more on them than pet owners did decades ago. With more beasts in our lives — as companions, as emotional support animals, as the beneficiaries of pet trusts — it only makes sense that their owners want their final moments in their lives to be as peaceful and painless as possible.

That’s where Meyers comes in. Working with Lap of Love, a company that provides veterinarian referrals for at-home pet euthanasia, she travels from house to house in the D.C. region offering grieving families’ animals what the word euthanasia means: “good death.” In four years, she has euthanized 1,500 animals: cats, dogs, rabbits, rats. Some had been with their owners since childhood. Some had traveled the world with them. Some were their owner’s sole companion.

Meyers has observed death rituals that include praying, burning incense, wrapping a deceased pet’s body in a white sheet, and opening a window for a pet’s spirit to exit. She has listened to owners read poems or letters to their pets and cried along with them.

“When people hear what I do for living, it sounds sad,” Meyers says. “But it’s strangely rewarding. … You give pets a peaceful experience. It’s a final gift.”< Meyers has been surrounded by a menagerie all her life. Growing up, she usually had a dog and one or two cats; at various times, she’s also had two hamsters, two turtles, a guinea pig, a bird and four chickens. Right now, she has Wren, a 6-year-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel; Travis, a 3-year-old pug; Brinkley, a 13-year-old rat terrier Chihuahua; and Pablo, a red-belly parrot. Right before the pandemic, Meyers decided to shift to doing euthanasia full time. She had been a veterinarian for more than two decades, and pet euthanasia turned out to be less stressful than working in an office while raising two children. In-home euthanasia can be easier on animals and their owners than office appointments with other sick animals and their distressed owners crowded around.

The first injection makes Xochi fall asleep.
Rameses Gaines holds a piece of Xochi’s fur.

Meyers administers the first shot in Xochi’s back. The dog, already lying down with her head on Gaines’s lap, turns to glance at Meyers as if mildly annoyed.

Then, the dog relaxes.

Minutes pass.

Using a hair clipper, Meyers shaves an inch-long strip of one of Xochi’s legs and inserts a small IV line. After confirming that the family wants to continue, Meyers administers the second shot, the one with the fatal dose.

Gaines looks at the spot on Xochi’s leg where the IV had been inserted.

“It’s amazing how gray she became,” Gaines says.

Meyers holds a stethoscope to Xochi’s chest. “Xochi has her wings,” she says.

The family cries.

So does Meyers.

She and Gaines embrace.

Meyers maneuvers Xochi onto a stretcher and covers her with a blanket. With the help of Gaines’s sons, she loads the dog into her car. Eventually Xochi will be cremated and her ashes returned to the Gaines family.

Death is a part of life, Meyers says.

“Many times, people will comment how a human family member passed, and it was so painful at the end, and this is peaceful by contrast,” she says.

They tell her, she says, that they wish they could go the same way.

Rameses Gaines touches a mold of Xochi’s paw print.

Complete Article HERE!

I Asked My Mom if She Was Prepared to Die

— Then I talked to some end-of-life experts. Here’s what I found out.

By By Shaina Feinberg and Julia Rothman

Recently, I had the following conversation with my 82-year-old mother, Mary:

Me: Are you prepared to die?

My mom: Not really. But I am prepared with my paperwork.

You might be wondering why I was asking my mom about her end-of-life preparedness. Well, when my dad, Paul, died suddenly a few years ago, we were completely unprepared.

“Dad and I never talked about what he wanted for his funeral,” my mom said. “He was 74 when he died, and he was in pretty good shape.”

On top of everything she had to do when he died, like planning the funeral, there was also the stress of finances and paperwork. “We had a joint checking account, but it didn’t have a lot of money. Our other bank account had more money, but was only in his name. I had to get that sorted out, which took ages.”

The most helpful advice my mom got when my dad died? “My best friend, Fran, told me, ‘Get a lot of death certificates because you’re going to have to send them to people and sometimes they don’t want a Xerox, they want the real thing.’ I got 15 death certificates from the funeral parlor.”

Preparing to die is complicated. How’s that for an understatement? You have to consider the emotional, spiritual and financial aspects. We talked to three end-of-life experts who unpacked how to make this extensive undertaking slightly more manageable.

According to a survey by Ethos, fewer than half of Americans have discussed their end-of-life plans with loved ones. Yet having these conversations is important, said Sarah Chavez, executive director of the nonprofit the Order of the Good Death, which provides resources to learn about and plan for death.

“These talks can be awkward,” Ms. Chavez said, “but by planning and talking about these things, it’s such a gift for the family that’s left behind.”

While you’re thinking about what to do with your body, you’ll also want to consider what to do with your stuff. “At a baseline, everybody should have a couple documents that are in effect while you’re alive,” said Michael Pevney, an estate planning lawyer with a practice in California. (He also makes videos about estate planning on TikTok.)

No matter what you decide to do with your body or your stuff, you will need someone to carry out your requests.

If you’re unwilling to ask your loved ones about their death preparations, there are other ways to broach the subject. “The easiest way is to open the family photo album and start having conversations about the people in the pictures,” said Joél Simone Maldonado, a funeral director and death educator. “The conversation always turns to what people did or didn’t like about a funeral or grieving process.” Mrs. Maldonado suggests using those conversations as a springboard to ask questions about what people’s end-of-life hopes are. And take notes.

The only upside to being so unprepared for my dad’s death is that now my mom is super prepared. “I have several folders in a cabinet that have all the things you should do when I die,” she said. “I’ve listed you as power of attorney, so you can write a check for the funeral. I’ve paid for my gravesite already. I’ll be next to Dad, under the same gravestone.”

When I asked my mom how she feels looking at the empty side of the gravestone, she said: “There’s my side. I have a place! Oh, and remember,” she added, “I’ve always wanted a mariachi band at my funeral.” Noted.


Complete Article HERE!

‘What Losing My Husband To Cancer At 39 Taught Me About Parenting Through Grief’

— ‘We had to learn to adjust from being a unit of three to a partnership of two’

By Clare Campbell-Cooper

I will hold my hands up and say I headed into parenthood with a healthy dose of naivety. I genuinely believed that my son George would ‘pop out’ (oh yes, I was that naïve), that I would immediately embrace motherhood, complete with the sun shining, lots of floaty linen clothes, a gurgling baby and possibly some soft-focus camera shots.

The reality was less prosaic and mostly consisted of me running five minutes late for everything and leaking from every orifice. It wasn’t a glamourous time and there was definitely no linen nor soft-focused moments.

But to add insult to injury, the month before I found I out I was pregnant, tests had diagnosed that my husband had a brain tumour. And after George was born, further tests showed that the tumour was malignant and David had less than ten years to live. It felt like the rug was being pulled from under our feet time and time again. And each time it took us slightly longer to get back up.

But we were lucky, David defied the odds and we had eleven years of being together as a family unit. We had times to come to terms with the fact that David was going to die. We had time to get used to it, to say our goodbyes, and in that we were so much more fortunate than many.

But watching a child grow up with grief in the depths of their eyes isn’t easy. I think all parents feel like they can’t do right for doing wrong sometimes, and this was exactly the same for me. But suddenly becoming a single parent, grieving and watching my child grieve, heightened this. I made the same mistakes that a lot of parents make, but the ability to bounce back just isn’t there in the same way when you feel so emotionally raw from grief.

When David was alive, I was advised to keep things emotionally stable for both David and George and I did that by being the buffer to their frustration, anger and grief. In reality, these are normal emotions that any household has, but in ours it could result in seizures and hospitalisation. But after David’s death, the wheels came off.

After David’s funeral we entered the dark, dark days of overwhelming waves of grief. George was going to school, I was working, and I stumbled through the days, not really having a clue what was happening. I didn’t seem to be able to get George in the right school uniform (which is never cool). I would be scrabbling around trying to find trousers or a polo shirt that was not wet nor in the washing machine.

Always a competent cook, I didn’t seem able to get food on the table. I could never get the bins out on the right day. And there didn’t seem to be a reason why I couldn’t, as nothing had changed; school was school, food was in the cupboard, bin day was still bin day. But I didn’t seem to be able to join the dots. And George watched me, dry eyed and shell shocked, not sure of anything; but needing continuity and surety, and so I tried my best to give him that.

And over time I adapted. I bought more school uniform so that I had more time to get things through the wash. I signed up to one of those pre-prepared food companies that deliver kits to your door. I tried to finish work at a reasonable time. I took George to his clubs and we saw more of my parents.

We had planned an amazing summer, which we knew would have been David’s last. He died at the end of May, before our summer. But George and I still went to Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Gone Wild Festival, and Center Parcs. We learned to adjust from being a unit of three to a partnership of two: me at 46 and George at 11. We learned how to lean on each other for support. Where I would have told David about my day, I found myself telling George. Where George would have wanted David to play football I donned my trainers and did my worst (and my worst was very bad).

I am not saying that it was easy, it wasn’t, and we still have our moments, but we muddle through. We both have regrets, but who doesn’t? We have regrets of how we have treated each other, those cutting comments that seem harmless at the time but burn into your memory. We have regrets of what we should have done but didn’t – the hours spent away from each other, in front of a computer, when we could have been touching, laughing, feeling. But we also have memories and we have been blessed with so much love. And we still have each other.

And I have learned that everyone has something. No-one’s lot in life is any harder or easier than anyone else’s and we are all doing the best we can to raise our children and to get through life with our heads above water…and that’s just fine. I’m still waiting for the moment when I can float around in linen, looking elegant with a soft-focus lens but I have found that a large gin and tonic and some love and laughter with our friends is much better for the soul – and far more likely to happen!

Complete Article HERE!

Asian Elephants display complex mourning rituals similar to humans

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Elephants are smart animals with strong feelings and they often work together. In India’s Bengal area, scientists found that elephants buried five baby elephants, according to a study published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa.

Researchers have limited the study of elephant thanatology—the examination of death and related practices— to the burial of calves. Observers had noted this aspect of behaviour in African elephants but had not documented something similar in Asian elephants until recently, despite both species diverging 4.2 million years ago.

The researchers wanted to clear up the second question – do Asian elephants, like African elephants, mourn their dead calves? And the answer is yes, and it is loud. The vocalizations from the elephants lasted between 30 and 40 minutes, but only in places far from human settlements.

They point out that this behaviour suggests elephants distinguish human spaces from non-human spaces to avoid disagreements. They also mention that elephants limited vocalisation to the burial phase.

The increasing encroachment of human activities into natural habitats and the resulting environmental degradation are forcing elephants to venture into human-dominated areas in search of food and other ecological necessities. This interaction has led to new behaviours in these majestic creatures.

Asian Elephants’ mourning behaviour

Parveen Kaswan, an officer with the Indian Forest Service, and Akashdeep Roy, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, spent 16 months reviewing literature relating to elephant burials. They found five case reports that document this behaviour.

An elephant calf was buried on a tea estate with its feet visible.

Researchers have revealed that Asian elephants, similar to their African counterparts, engage in what we can describe as mourning rituals. Observations showed them vocalising loudly and burying their deceased calves, exhibiting a level of ritualistic behaviour that parallels human funeral rites.

The study reports a heartbreaking journey of a mother elephant. The mother elephant carried her dead calf for two days before letting it go. This extended time of grieving shows the deep attachment between mother elephants and their offspring. This could have been made stronger possibly by hormonal influences like oxytocin and the long gestation period elephants experience. This response is consistent with other studies on chacma baboons, olive baboons, African elephants and Thornicroft’s giraffes.

As per the study, the burial process is a collective effort, involving not only the mothers but also other females within the herd who act as surrogate caregivers, as well as elephants of various ages. This communal participation underscores the intricate social fabric of elephant herds and their collective mourning when faced with death. Notably, this ritualistic burial is reserved exclusively for the young. The physical impracticality of carrying the larger, heavier adults precludes them from receiving the same rite. This selective practice indicates that the elephants’ mourning and burial customs are particularly significant for the young, whose passing deeply impacts the social structure of the herd.

Compassionate behaviour

The research aimed to understand the ‘perimortem’ strategy and ‘postmortem’ behaviour of Asian elephants. The main evidence shows that someone or something transported the corpses from afar, treated with great care. They buried the corpses in preferred locations, always in a specific posture, which was an unusual lying position with legs upright.

The author said, “Our study found an interesting thing – the placement of carcasses with their paws raised in narrow irrigation drains. This strategic behaviour shows the care and affection of herd members toward the deceased animal and suggests that in a potential crush situation, pack members prioritize the head over the feet,” they highlight.”

“Elephants are social and affectionate animals and, based on an external examination of the carcasses, we also suggest that herd members gently placed the dead calves by grasping one or more legs,” the experts conclude.

The authors of the report thoroughly investigated the underlying reason for the death of the offspring through postmortem examinations. One of the conclusions is that there was no direct human intervention in any of the five deaths.

A buried carcass corresponding to case 3 of Bharnabaritea estate.

“Through direct and indirect evidence, this study highlights compassionate and helpful elephants’s behaviour during carcass burial. Asian elephants transport their deceased calves to isolated places, away from humans and carnivores, while searching for drains irrigation and depressions to bury the body,” the report states.

No infanticide among Asian elephants

Many animal groups, such as monkeys, meat-eaters, and rodents, commit infanticide or baby killing. Different reasons, such as elimination of competition, scarcity of resources, or maintaining social order within a group, contribute to this phenomenon.

However, the researchers found that there was no infanticide among the Asian elephants. They believe there are a few reasons why elephants don’t kill babies:

  • Elephants, particularly females and their young, live in close family groups forming strong bonds. This closeness possibly prevents them from hurting the young, actively encouraging them to cooperate in caring for them.
  • Baby elephants require long term care from their mothers and other females in the herd. This extended care and help from everyone might decrease the likelihood of someone killing a baby.
A buried carcass corresponding to case 2 of Chunabhatitea estate.
  • In the breeding process, elephants reproduce without having to kill their babies to quicken the mother’s readiness for another offspring. Unlike some other animals, the mother cannot immediately have another offspring if she loses a baby. Thereby, eradicating the need for males to kill babies.
  • Male elephants neither directly contribute to raising the babies nor participate in the close female groups. They prioritize finding females ready to mate rather than assuming control over a herd and eliminating other males’ babies. This social structure and breeding style decreases the likelihood of elephants killing babies.

Complete Article HERE!