Monso Susana
Monso Susana - Playing Possum How Animals Understand Death - Hardcover
Monso Susana - Playing Possum How Animals Understand Death - Hardcover
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Binding: Hardcover
Description: How animals conceive of death and dying and what it can teach us about our own relationships with mortality When 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 Mons 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. Mons 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.
Title: Playing Possum How Animals Understand Death
Author(s): Monso Susana
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Barcode: 9780691260761
Pages: 264 Pages, 18 B/W Illus. 2 Tables.
Publication Date: 10/15/2024
Category: Animal Behaviour
Description: How animals conceive of death and dying and what it can teach us about our own relationships with mortality When 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 Mons 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. Mons 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.
Title: Playing Possum How Animals Understand Death
Author(s): Monso Susana
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Barcode: 9780691260761
Pages: 264 Pages, 18 B/W Illus. 2 Tables.
Publication Date: 10/15/2024
Category: Animal Behaviour
