Anthropologist Barbara J. King sets out to "look at animals' actions with fresh eyes" in How Animals Grieve. Building upon her experience working with baboons, King considers species from house pets to farm animals to wild creatures--combining her own fieldwork and results of other studies to explain how humans can understand animals' grief processes without anthropomorphizing them.
King approaches her subject matter with an obvious love and respect for all animals. In several cases, she points out concerns over the research approach and ethical boundaries it may be breaching. Her anecdotal examples are powerful illustrations of the capacity for bereavement, and her unanswered questions ("Do animals read bones on the ground like we read obituaries?") provide much to think about.
She also emphasizes the importance of avoiding universal definitions of grief. Just as some humans do not display signs of grief, individuals within other species may show no outward signs of grief although many other members of the species do.
How Animals Grieve is not the definitive work on animal grief, but rather a stepping-stone to further investigation, observation and understanding. King hopes others will continue to look with fresh eyes, expand our knowledge and better understand all animals.
The ultimate importance of knowing how animals grieve is to acknowledge our own species' role in that grief and change the behaviors that ultimately and negatively affect them. King offers readers a new perspective through which to view the animal world in hopes that those changes will happen. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts