And “human exceptionalism” is just a fact.

Gizmodo interviewed UNED philosophy prof Susana Monsó September 30 on the question of whether animals understand death. She thinks they do and she points to the opossum as an example:

Basically, in my book, I’m trying to argue that the concept of death is easier to acquire than we usually presuppose, and then we can expect it to be fairly widespread in nature. And the opossum provides one of the best pieces of evidence that we have of this, and that’s because she engages in a very elaborate death display whenever she feels threatened. She goes into what’s called thanatosis—this death feigning where she incorporates all sorts of signals of death. She adopts the bodily and facial expression of a corpse. Her body temperature drops. Her breathing and heart rate are reduced. She secretes this putrid smelling liquid, and she stops responding to the world. And if you didn’t know in advance about her little trick, you would be fooled by it for sure. Now, the opossum doesn’t necessarily understand what she’s doing. For her, this reaction is probably analogous to when we are in a state of fear and our pupils dilate, or our hair stands on end, and we’re not controlling this. We’re not even aware of this, but it happens automatically. For the opossum, it’s probably something like that. It’s probably also an automatic process. However, we need to have a reason why this defense mechanism evolved and why it has the shape that it has.

Ed Cara, “Do Animals Understand Death? The Latest Science Might Surprise You

Her book, Playing Possum (Princeton 2024), is a translation of her 2021 book La zarigüeya de Schrödinger (Schrödinger’s Possum) which enlarges on this and similar themes.

She admits that her thesis is partly driven by her environment concerns — and her emotional needs:

And it’s tied into my general interest, which has always been in those capacities that we think of as uniquely human, and that we tend to use to ground this idea of human exceptionalism—this sense of moral superiority that then allows us to exploit the natural world without really thinking about other beings.

But at the same time, I was about to turn 30, and I think it happens to a lot of people that when they approach that age they start to think a lot about death. I’ve heard this from several other people, and I think it has to do with with something about going into official adulthood, so to speak. So I became kind of obsessed with death in that time in my life. Cara, Might Surprise You

Her thesis is difficult to make sense of. As she more or less admits, thanatosis is an involuntary nervous system reaction on the part of the opossum that has no relationship whatever to understanding an abstraction like death:

The underlying notions around “turning thirty” would not likely mean anything to an animal either because that too is an abstraction. It depends on understanding concepts like aging, lifespan, and forgone opportunities. The utter finality of death is an abstraction too. That is why dogs may wait in hope for the return of a deceased human friend but the humans who loved him do not.

Monsó’s book will likely appeal to people who care about the environment who are turning thirty but it would not be a good guide to animal psychology.

You may also wish to read: A Philosopher simply invents animals’ concept of death. She demands that we accept her invention so we can “rethink” human exceptionalism, and the “disrespect for the natural world that comes with it.”