Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

"A New Yorker Best Book We've Read This Year" "Playing Possum is an unexpected mix of witty and grisly, cerebral and earthy. Monsó doesn’t so much answer questions about death as raise new ones, encouraging us to shed our reflexive anthropocentrism by paying close attention to what animals do, even when it fails to accord with human modes of behavior."---Jennifer Szalai, New York Times "Playing Possum identifies a new discipline: comparative thanatology, the study of 'how animals react to individuals who are dead or close to dying, the physiological processes that underlie their reactions, and what these behaviors tell us about the minds of animals.' . . . Monsó is tender-hearted in her empathic descriptions but hard-headed when it comes to interpreting what an animal might be experiencing."---David P. Barash, Wall Street Journal "A lively new book. . . . A sometimes moving, occasionally funny, and always considered treatise on whether animals understand death—and what that even means."---David Scharfenberg, Boston Globe "Playing Possum represents a major contribution to comparative thanatology."---Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker "Extremely thoughtful, important, and seminal."---Marc Bekoff, Psychology Today "This riveting book—often surprisingly uplifting, sometimes even funny—will enhance and expand our understanding of how other minds may apprehend one of life’s greatest mysteries."---Sy Montgomery, American Scholar "In this study of animal attitudes to mortality and what it can teach us, Susana Monsó, an expert in animal cognition, intriguingly combines behavioural science, comparative psychology and zoology." * New Statesman * "[Monsó] makes the strong case that humans are far from the only animals to know the meaning of dying, even if our vocabularies differ. . . . [Her] book provides a lot of really fascinating lessons and reminders about death and how it’s seen in the world."---Ed Cara, Gizmodo "In thoughtful prose peppered with lively anecdotes, Monsó tackles our all-too-human anthropocentric biases surrounding death and deftly outlines a useful philosophical framework for understanding animal cognition to illustrate how a minimal concept of death might be possible, even if it differs among species."---Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica "Illuminating."---Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution "Monsó upends our anthropocentric views of death and makes the case that other species possess the cognitive requirements to understand death and mortality."---Francisco J. Rivera Rosario, The Transmitter "Monsó’s work offers a fresh perspective on death, both for humans and animals."---Trinity Sparke, One Green Planet "Fascinating. . . . [Monsó] has written an exceedingly interesting book that is as accessible to a general audience as it is relevant to specialists."---Leon Vlieger, Inquisitive Biologist "[Monsó is able] to write in such a way that is . . . lighter, somewhat funnier, and . . . understandable for a non-academic audience."---Cara Santa Maria, Talk Nerdy "Susana Monsó has written an erudite account of the way animals relate to death, from the perspective of both predator and prey, and even the recognition of the end of life by those animals fortunate to live a long life, ultimately succumbing from natural causes. In a step by step manner, she takes us through the stages of cognition, demonstrating that animals have a concept of death, differing in detail from species to species, but present nonetheless. . . . The book is written in a style that is easy to read, yet compelling in its complexity. Along the way, a little humour is added for good measure."---David Gascoigne, Travels with Birds