Do animals know when they are about to die, and say a final goodbye to their owners or families? Dr Rupert Sheldrake, a researcher in the U.K. who is considered a ‘heretic’—curiously, a term that originated in religion—by the “scientific” community, certainly seems to think so.
Sheldrake, who worked at an agricultural institute near Hyderabad, India, 50 years ago, developing new varieties and cropping systems in chickpeas, or chana, says he has spent almost a quarter century collecting a mass of evidence that shows pets provide a “last rally” for humans to try and comfort them ahead of their death.
The octogenarian, author of A New Science of Life, the 1981 book that got him “ex-communicated” from the scientific community, and The Science Delusion, which was published a dozen years ago, told The Daily Star newspaper that the work of German researcher Michael Nahm, an authority on “terminal lucidity” in humans, had helped him to recognize the importance of similar end-of-life experiences in pets.
“Terminal lucidity is well documented in care homes and hospices, but rarely studied,” Sheldrake told the newspaper. “It’s a burst of mental and physical energy, often accompanied by unusual clarity, soon before death. And it appears equally common in animals.”
Sheldrake said he has stacks of tales on how pets perform sudden loving gestures for their owners before slinking off into corners to die alone, to spare the owners the pain of witnessing their passing. “The grief of losing a beloved pet can be as intense as the loss of any dear friend—and the experience of witnessing an animal’s death can be deeply painful,” he said.
One of the earliest recorded instances of a pet bidding goodbye to its owners was noted by writers Vincent and Margaret Gaddis in 1970, according to the newspaper. Tomcat Pussy was taught by the couple who kept him to hold out a paw to shake hands. When Pussy had to be put down and the veterinarian arrived, the cat dragged himself out of his basket, walked over to his sorrowful keepers, and held out his paw to both in turn before going back to his “home” to die.
Sheldrake said his “tentative” theory is that the last rally has an evolutionary benefit. ”In the wild, an animal that instinctively knows it is dying can detach itself from the pack and take itself away, to go somewhere its corpse won’t spread disease.”
That sounds similar to the ancient Indian concepts of vānaprastha and sanyās. But, of course, in the wild many of the old and the infirm are also simply culled by predators, or stronger rivals, before they can even think of saying goodbye.
Sandy Pawpaw
Sandy Pawpaw is a fierce advocate of unleashing the animal in, and with, you.
