Burying

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Blindseer
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Re: Burying

Post by Blindseer » Sat Mar 15, 2008 5:26 pm

Wildbluesun wrote:No, not in The Sight (which I don't trust for wolf information at all), on a website. Lemme try and find it...

EDIT:
Here: http://www.wolfcountry.net/information/WolfPup.html

From the "mortality" section:
Wolves being very social animals are known to bury the dead pups.
I'm a bit iffy about that information, though, due to continuing bad grammar. I don't trust sites with bad grammar.
I dont trust it either, half of the other information is incorrect!
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Re: Burying

Post by Darkwalker » Sat Mar 15, 2008 9:45 pm

From all my knowledge of this world we call Earth, humans are the only species that buries its dead, and humans are the only species that have developed spirituality or relligeon, and the only ones to have such esoteric concepts as rituals for the dead.

Only until the time of Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapeins were there any sort of burial rituals, and I believe that this only occured among the Homo Sapiens.

To my knowledge, humans are the only animals to bury the deceased.
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Re: Burying

Post by Wildbluesun » Sun Mar 16, 2008 10:21 am

Blindseer wrote:
Wildbluesun wrote:No, not in The Sight (which I don't trust for wolf information at all), on a website. Lemme try and find it...

EDIT:
Here: http://www.wolfcountry.net/information/WolfPup.html

From the "mortality" section:
Wolves being very social animals are known to bury the dead pups.
I'm a bit iffy about that information, though, due to continuing bad grammar. I don't trust sites with bad grammar.
I dont trust it either, half of the other information is incorrect!
Yeah, I didn't really believe it in the first place. I'm not sure who runs that site, but it looks like an enthusiastic amateur.

*cross wolfcountry off "good sites" list*

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Re: Burying

Post by CLBaileyi » Sun Mar 16, 2008 6:50 pm

Wolves are known to bury any dead pup-although often it is dug up at a later time (either by another wolf or other scavenger). Re: the comment about human's being the only one to bury their dead-wolves don't do it for the same reasons humans may. This has been seen by both wolves in the wild and in captivity.
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Re: Burying

Post by ChocolateRain » Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:14 pm

CLBaileyi wrote:Wolves are known to bury any dead pup-although often it is dug up at a later time (either by another wolf or other scavenger). Re: the comment about human's being the only one to bury their dead-wolves don't do it for the same reasons humans may. This has been seen by both wolves in the wild and in captivity.
Do you know why they bury them though?

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Re: Burying

Post by CLBaileyi » Sun Mar 16, 2008 9:29 pm

Of course, it is impossible to know for certain what a wolf is thinking when it does something. some of the theories are that, in the case of a dead pup, it might be to prevent scavengers from easy access to the pup, and therefore an easy meal or attraction to the den/litter.

I know when we have lost pups, the adult female would remove the pup from the den and bury (cache) it. We later found the area dug up by other pack members and no sign of the pup-probable consumption by the other members (no other evidence showed other animal presence). We also have seen the other pack members dig up the pup and then re-cache it in another location. Again, the following day the remains were dug up by something and nothing remained.

I will email Dave Mech and see what else he may say about this issue.
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Re: Burying

Post by Darkwalker » Sun Mar 16, 2008 9:38 pm

I see...
Let no-one say that I am unwilling to change my mind in the face of evidence and experience. I find this information fascinating, and I aminterested to hear more opinions on this.
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Re: Burying

Post by Rinith » Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:12 am

As for religion, we could not be the only ones with one, who knows? I am not saying wolves have one, but I am not saying they don't (Something that is very... very hard to prove) And wolves and humans are not the only creatures to bury the dead, many animals do it (though maybe not many if I include a percentile :lol: ) though for many different reasons as well, I can't remember where I saw this but I heard that Elephants with bury there dead and tend to leave a tusk or bone pointing above ground slightly, posably to prevent the spread of sickness and/or as a marker that Elephants died here
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Re: Burying

Post by Darkwalker » Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:15 am

I admit my wrongness! My words were clearly ill though out, and I should have done more research before stsing such things as though they were facts.
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Re: Burying

Post by Rinith » Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:41 pm

No problem, I have a lot of info stored on my head on things that "only humans do" I use them agenst PETA members lol
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Re: Burying

Post by TheLaziestCapricorn » Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:09 pm

Wildbluesun wrote:I heard something, somewhere, about wolves occasionally burying dead pups (I imagine pups that were old enough to come out of the den), but I'm not sure about how reliable that information is.
I've heard it about burying stillborn pups too

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Re: Burying

Post by Wildbluesun » Tue Mar 18, 2008 3:44 pm

I also admit my wrongness! That's really, really interesting.
Rinith wrote:As for religion, we could not be the only ones with one, who knows?
I doubt other animals have religion. If you count religion as the belief in and worship of abstract beings, then - to have religion - you'd have to be able to visualise an abstract concept, and think that that abstract concept:
a) is worthy of respect or reverence
b) will make your life better if you worship it, or make your life worse if you do not worship it
...that's quite a complex concept.

But before that you need to visualise a deity, an abstract concept. How many animals can think in the abstract? I'm not sure, but self-awareness (taken to mean the ability to recognise yourself in in a mirror) might be a good start; if you can recognise yourself, then you can start recognising beings outside your own sphere of existence.

So dolphins, elephants and some primates (perhaps others I don't know about) are our candidates for animal religion. Can they think in the abstract? I have no idea.

Of course, we could just look at behaviour and draw conclusions from that, but that's not as interesting.

Sorry for the long and overly technical reply, I'm just interested in this topic.
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Re: Burying

Post by Rinith » Tue Mar 18, 2008 6:43 pm

There is a topic started about how animals think, it kind of died, go join that, what you said is quite interesting in fact
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Re: Burying

Post by pawnee » Sat Mar 22, 2008 5:09 pm

I`ve heard of parent wolves burying dead wolf puppies, but I also know that some captive packs have been observed eating their dead companions. i`ve read that sometimes when wild wolves kill strange wolves, they take out a few chunks but I`m not sure if they actually eat the carcass.
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Re: Burying

Post by WolfQuest Lover » Fri Mar 28, 2008 4:35 pm

If a bear had attacked the pups. And the parents not find the pups. Then I think they going to search after them a while. I`m sure they care about their pups if it had been happened. (Sorry for my English, If something is wrong..) :shock:
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