Scientists unravel the mystery of how elephants mourn their dead thanks to YouTube, report says - Business Insider India

A team of scientists used YouTube videos to observe how elephants mourn their dead, according to a new paper.

Biologist Sanjeeta Sharma Pokharel had only observed one example of Asian elephants mourning their dead in the wild after four years of fieldwork in India, according to Science.org — the American Association for the Advancement of Science's journal.

They found 39 videos capturing 24 cases of elephants mourning their dead, per a paper published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

According to The New York Times, they saw elephants sniffing and touching carcasses with their trunks, shaking the dead with their legs, and kicking dying calves in an apparent attempt to revive them.

Most surprising, Pokharel told the newspaper, was observing adult female elephants carrying the bodies of dead calves.