How Animals Grieve, the book

For all my readers emotionally attached to their animals, I'm sure you all realize that animals also have emotions and can feel for us. They can understand when we are happy, and they understand when we are sad. Within the animal kingdom, they share some of these same emotions with each other.

Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary, Barbara King, has written a book called "How Animals Grieve." In her book she discusses how grief emerges from love. She compares it to our own lives and losses. She says that some animals are capable of grief but don't grieve. "It depends on so many factors, some related to the species, others to individual personality and the nature of the survivors relationship with the deceased, as it does with humans also," she added.

King would like us to take away from her book a resonance for animal emotion and inspiration and hope from the animals who freely express their love for others. She hopes that some might even come away from the book with new things to think about in relationship to loving and grieving.

The book also delves into ending all invasive biomedical testing, adding the animal's emotional awareness to a long list of reasons to carry on that fight.

I invite you to read the book and see whether you agree or disagree with her theories, particularly at the comparisons she makes with human grieving.