In Jane Goodall’s MasterClass, she talks about a chimpanzee “no doubt” dying of grief after his mother died. How can an animal (or human) die of grief?
In: Biology
They’ve done experiments where they’ve deprived baby chimps of maternal contact. It’s not good.
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/harlows-classic-studies-revealed-the-importance-of-maternal-contact.html
Pretty simple, unfortunately: they’re so broken they stop eating and drinking. That kills people in about three days, and I assume it’s about the same for chimps.
There is actually a thing called broken heart syndrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takotsubo_cardiomyopathy?wprov=sfti1
As the other comment says, they become so emotionally distraught that they stop eating and drinking.
[http://ratfanclub.org/grief.html#:~:text=Rats%20can%20experience%20grief%20after,companion%20just%20as%20humans%20can.&text=They%20may%20or%20may%20not,the%20surviving%20rats%20extra%20attention](http://ratfanclub.org/grief.html#:~:text=Rats%20can%20experience%20grief%20after,companion%20just%20as%20humans%20can.&text=They%20may%20or%20may%20not,the%20surviving%20rats%20extra%20attention).
Rats also grieve.
And anecdotally, I keep rats, and had two brothers that were in the same litter, and when one of them died from a long health battle, the other one, who was perfectly healthy, pulled back socially, stopped eating and drinking and died within a week.
There were other rats there, but they were much younger and he wasn’t as emotionally bonded with them.
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