Season 4, Episode 24: On Grief and Mourning for Animals with Panu Pihkala

Written By Climate Change And Happiness
 

image credit | Tina Kuper

Season 4, Episode 24: On Grief and Mourning for Animals with Panu Pihkala

Thomas learned about Panu’s recent research with Elisa Aaltola on animal ethical mourning and how this relates to feelings people have about pets and companion animals, farmed animals and wild creatures. Like many of our emotions about nature and environmental issues, natural feelings for kindred species are often ignored, suppressed or disenfranchised (not recognized and given standing) in human-centric society and economics. Ways to enfranchise grief for animals includes being honest and bearing witness, creating art and rituals, and sponsoring community activities. Being open about your moral commitments for fellow animals, and your love, care and empathy, can bring a sense of relief, honor, rest, peace and grace. This can free up your energy and commitment to change society's practices about our fellow creatures. 

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Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. This is our podcast, a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other environmental issues and different tumultuous times that we're all living through. This is a podcast where we have asked this provocative question of what it means to be happy in the modern world or what would it mean for us to be happy in the modern world. Often to do that, we must go through barriers to happiness, and we have to deal with things that are not happy so we can figure out how to make sense of them or how to make peace with them. And that's kind of where we're at today. Panu, as you all know, if you've been listening, is always studying different interesting things about emotions in the world. And one of the areas that Panu has been working on is grief and loss regarding animals and other animals outside of the human animal. So that's what we're talking about today. So, I'm going to be interviewing Panu about this research. So, let's jump into it. Panu, you’ve been doing some research and we'll put information in the show notes about feelings of loss and mourning and ways to be ethically mourning loss and grief related to non-human animals. So, what kind of things have you been discovering there?

Pihkala: Yes, and dear listeners, if you think of your life history, almost all of us have at least some relationship with other animals. For many people, there's been some kind of pet or companion animal in places and families where we have lived. Some people have been raising animals for various purposes and there may be emotional connections in many ways or various hobbies or practices. Some animal species in the Western World or industrialized world are often in positions where there's strong emotional connections between humans and them. Dogs and cats are prominent, but there's a lot of other companion animals and pets. The bond between horses and people who ride or take care of horses can be very strong. So, that's one dimension here and for many people, losing a close animal has been an important lesson in loss and grief because the lifespan of many animals is shorter than the human lifespan. So, depending on where you live and what kind of privileges one has, it may be that the death of a dog or cat is one of the first death experiences in close family relations. And in grief research, the focus has been on humans who are dying or suffering, but for many decades it has already been recognized that losing pets or companion animals evokes strong emotions in people, which shouldn't come as a surprise. This topic has actually been a contradictory and difficult one in many societies because there may be assumptions that deeper grief should be related to human loss, for example. So, there's been people who understand you when you talk about loss and grief after losing an animal close to you. And then there may be people who really can't resonate with that and that often leads to what is called ‘disenfranchised grief’ in research which is grief that is not given a public voice or validation. How about you, Thomas, when you think of your life history, does this resonate?

Doherty: Well, I think this research is really helpful. I'm thinking about it and this whole idea of disenfranchise means it's not recognized. We don't talk about it and so we don't have language for it. But it's helpful for me to see what you've been studying because you talk about grief that we feel about pets and animals that are close to us, like cats and dogs and household pets, but then also wildlife. You link it to grief about wild animals which could be whales or extinct animals, wild condors, orangutans, or any kind of animal and the grief we feel when they're threatened with extinction, or their habitats are gone. So, that's a big thing that people feel. And then there’s this more contentious area of farmed animal grief because most of the animals on the planet right now, pound for pound, are livestock and farm animals. It is one way humans have transformed the planet. We have so many thousands of chickens and cows and all this stuff around the world. And that's just a really touchy topic on a number of levels ethically. So, it's really courageous to do this.

I can touch on it on a number of levels, my own concerns about wild animals that I value and love. I've had pets, I've had a dog for many years that I had as a young adult that I had to put down when he was old and had illnesses and that was very sad. I have an ancient cat, Lakshmi, who's going to be 21 this year and she's just an old person in our home that's been here since she was a kitten. So, we're preparing for her end of life. So, that's a really personal level. And in my family, my two sisters are both very strong animal rights advocates, so we have interesting discussions about veganism and various things. My sister, Sherry, was a zookeeper and worked in zoos for a number of years and she also worked at a place called the Center for Great Apes in Florida which was a refuge for chimpanzees and orangutans that had been used in movies or kept as pets. It was essentially like a rehabilitation old folks home hospice for these large wild animals. And I think people don't even realize that these kinds of places exist for elephants and orangutans. There's a whole subculture of people that are working for animals. So anyway, I think it's huge. When you talk to people or do the research, what are some of the surprising things that you notice?

Pihkala: Yes, thanks for reflecting on all that. I also met Lakshmi when visiting Portland this spring. She's old, but still going. And in my family childhood, we also had a cat so that's a personal resonance. And as you said, there's three case examples in this article. There's actually two research articles coming out, and one is already out there. It's called “Animal Ethical Mourning: Types of Loss and Grief in Relation to Non-Human Animals.” So, there's a lot in the title and it’s written together with Elisa Aaltola. Elisa is a philosopher and animal rights activist and a very empathetic person who is well known in Finland for her public work around animal rights. So, she's both a researcher and a public figure. And the three case examples have some similarities, but also differences in dynamics. And this pet and companion animal loss is luckily becoming more enfranchised if that's a word in English. So, there's more voice and recognition for that in many places, but not everywhere. Sometimes I think that the depth of those losses is still not recognized. So, how strong the emotional bond and connection may be and sometimes it's a double loss in the sense that the animal companion has before helped the human companion in facing different stresses and hardships. So, when losing an animal, one is also losing a source of support. And that may happen of course when we lose close persons, but that's something to be recognized.

This wildlife grief ties with what is called ‘ecological grief’ or ‘environmental grief’ and what we have been discussing often in this podcast. Climate change related sadness and grief which is often called climate grief is also closely connected with that. In research, literature, and art-based work around ecological grief, many different animals are featured and discussed. There's some very profound artwork which at the same time tries to work against disenfranchised grief in relation to wildlife grief. And it may sometimes be challenging to think of ways to do that mourning in community. But people have been trying to find creative ways like memorials or some kind of rituals or performances. And I've been part of that work in Finland. Like this annual theme day of Remembrance Day for Lost Species on November 30th. So, there's a small but growing international movement for having an annual team day for remembering other species and those which are extinct. There's some memorials people have set up. I think one of the most famous is the memorial for passenger pigeon in the United States and that sort of thing. The third case example of farmed animal grief may be very challenging for people who feel it because of the social contradictions. We all know that there's differences in opinion about meat eating and vegetarianism, for example. And still, people are living in the same cities and visiting the same grocery stores. And one of the things I realized when doing this research with Elisa and engaging with the literature and people's experiences was learning more about how challenging it may be for people who feel this kind of grief because then they have to try to find ways to process that in communities where there's disagreement over these issues.

Doherty: Yeah, let’s hold that thought on the disagreement. I'm just thinking about the art piece there. When I was working on my book, I did a little research on art and nature. There's a whole movement of people that do art regarding animals. And there's an artist, Amanda Stronza, who makes these alters to animals. People do that around roadkill animals, animals that are killed on the side of the road. I think the writer, Barry Lopez, had written a famous essay about that years ago. So disenfranchised means unrecognized, not given any rights. When we're driving down the highway, and we see a deer or a raccoon or a bird or a coyote killed on the side of the road, we just pass it by. There’s a social denial about that being an issue. Like someone's going to come and pick up that animal and take it away, but we're not supposed to mourn for it. We're not supposed to be sad for these animals. At least that's what society will tell us. But, of course, we do feel sad, and children feel sad and it's poignant that children have to learn that you're not supposed to notice this, you're supposed to just drive by. Whereas if it was a dog or a cat, then that's different. We have different rules. I've seen whole traffic stop because a dog was in the road because people don't want to hurt the dog. It's just fascinating how we have a hierarchy of different rights for things like that and obviously, if someone was actively torturing an animal that wouldn't be okay, but if it's hit by a truck, it's okay. So anyway, it's confusing so this gets into all that kind of stuff.

Pihkala: Yeah, totally. Thanks for voicing that, Thomas. For children and young people, it can be very confusing. Then, thinking of why the bad treatment of certain species is widely accepted in society, for example. This hierarchy of species affects mourning practices in places where people professionally work with animals. So, one quote from a study of two professionals was by a bird caring person who was feeling bad because in Judaism, charismatic big mammals may be publicly mourned and there may be poignant practices of enabling people who visit the zoo to participate in that memorialization. But then when birds die, the attitude may be that they don't live long anyway and there's going to be new birds and that sort of thing. So, this hierarchy can exist in these places where there is caring about animals.

Doherty: Yeah, and then of course, it's political. So, it's touchy. You talk about animal grief and how it can be contested, right? Meaning that people don't agree on the ethics of it. And of course, most of the animal factory farming is kept secret or suppressed from the public because if people saw what was happening in these places, they would viscerally become nauseated and then they wouldn't want the animals. We talk about ecological wake up calls around climate change or other things, but people have wake up calls around eating animals when they learn about some of the practices. It’s just complicated because there are many people that try to ethically raise animals and try to ethically do this, but once you get into this large-scale factory commodification corporations, we lose touch with the humanity of it.

Pihkala: Yeah, and there's lots of developments in society and the economy which have been pushing farmers to go into more large-scale animal raising and production. So, it hasn't been easy for people who would have wanted to do that on a more personal level and small-scale level. That may be economically very difficult. Luckily, there's people who try to do that. There's a book called Environmental and Animal Abuse Denial: Averting Our Gaze by Tomaž Grušovnik from eastern Europe and a couple of others edited that one. That's an interesting book where these mechanisms of trying to keep a distance or trying to keep them hidden are used, as you say Thomas, both in relation to climate matters and to animal factory farming, for example. So, on one hand it's a very human thing to try not to look too intensively at suffering, but of course it's not very ethical and that's where the title of our article comes from, “Animal Ethical Mourning”. It's moral commitment to animals and then the grief which results from this moral commitment. I hope dear listeners that this doesn't get too heavy for you, but it's deeply entwined with love, care, and empathy. That's of course seen in children, the sort of ability to empathize with animals and, as you say Thomas, the conflicted feelings which come if they observe that the adult world doesn't bury all the animals on the roadside, for example. But overall, there’s this whole phenomenon of sadness and grief because of what happens to non-human animals. It's tied with love and care. So, on one hand it's very heavy, but it also testifies to very important and power-giving relationalities in our lives.

Doherty: Yeah, power-giving is a great term. It's an underlying hurt because we care and underlying this is love and care. The only reason we feel discomfort is because we have some value there. Unnecessary suffering is probably one of the core underlying values here. I think people really understand intellectually that we all die, animals die, there's going to be death. I don't see people mourning as much when they watch say a wildlife film where some cheetahs are chasing down a wildebeest in the savanna and they catch the wildebeest and eat it. There's an understanding of the cycle of life and that they're predators and prey. It seems to be somehow part of the natural order, but when we take it out of that and put it into this needless suffering, I think most everyone can agree that, unless you’re pathological, people don't like unnecessary suffering nor do they like waste or things that are wasteful. So, I think we can all agree on these kinds of things. Listeners, you're hearing us talk about this and you're going to have all of your connections, whether it's your pet or concerns about animals in the wild or concerns about animals and factory farms. You might have your own farm or grow your own animals or chickens for eggs and all these kinds of things. Hunting of course is a whole special lifestyle. I know a lot of people that are very ethical regarding hunting. They're not interested in unnecessary suffering of animals or wasting animals. I think it's possible for hunters to both enjoy the thrill of the hunt, but also feel grief for the loss of the animal. I think that's what we would have in the native cultures, some combination of ritual reciprocal relations, right? Like nature and humans, we give and take. We're missing so much of that in the modern world, that kind of ceremonial connection. So, it's a deep thing. We touched on this a bit, but let’s move toward this for the end of the talk. What do we do with this grief, like how do we enfranchise it, how do we give it power in examples that you've seen?

Pihkala: That's a very important question and one can take a look at what we know about grief and bereavement, about human loss and death and what kind of things and practices support a healthy grieving process, if we call it that. So, there's many possible things ranging from something one can do on one's own, for example freely writing or journaling about feelings of sadness and grief. That's something which can be done even while there might be social disenfranchised grief. Doing some kind of rituals for commemoration helps both with emotions and also has an ethical dimension, the task of bearing witness, which we have discussed in an earlier episode. “Environmental Commemoration” would be one frame here by Mihaela Mihai and Mathias Thaler, for example. Those rituals can also be done on your own or with a small, trusted group of people or at some times and places it may be possible to do that in public. There’s interesting new sorts of practices and rituals emerging. For example, with wildlife grief, there’s this annual Remembrance Day for Lost Species on November 30th. So that's an annual theme day. I think it started from Britain, from Brighton if I'm not mistaken, and then it's spread into various corners of the world, and I've been facilitating that kind of work with small groups of people in Helsinki. We usually do that annual ritual in the animal cemetery in the central park of Helsinki, which is really a forest. So, it's mostly companion animals there, but there's a memorial stone for animals who have suffered in medicine and animal testing, for example. So, these kinds of stable memorials are one option. And I know that in the States, there's a memorial for the passenger pigeon which has been there for decades already, so that's part of the public dimension.

Then of course, coping with grief is a very wide topic and there's lots of good literature on that. Personally, I've been learning much from William Worden and his tasks of mourning approach and also from Robert Neimeyer and sort of meaning reconstruction framework. It explains how we need to work through changes in meanings in life when something major happens. We've discussed this in one episode way back and in this article, there's discussion about the various types of loss and grief and there's also a separate episode in our podcast about that. And in spring 2025, the Climate Mental Health Network presented a new set of resources on ecological and climate grief based on these types of loss and grief. So, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. So, these interconnections between animal ethical mourning and ecological and climate grief are quite profound. But how about you, Thomas? With your long experience of counselling people and in psychology, what are some of the things that come up to you in relation to coping with sadness and grief?

Doherty: Yeah, I'm just thinking out loud here. I wasn't aware of the passenger pigeon memorial, but I see that it's in Wisconsin. I think with a lot of these things, we think we're alone and we think we're the only one. Then, when we scratch the surface, we realize other people think about this. So, there’s this paradox that you can't stay isolated and once you start talking about it, you find kindred spirits. I think that's one of the big universal takeaways. This animal stuff is universal. I can't imagine anyone not having some opinions on it if we just create a safe space to talk about it. It’s just so primal to our existence. So, I do think sometimes people either underestimate the resources around them or they overestimate the barriers. But it does take that initial courage to share something. I know if you go to any Audubon Society or bird society or any kind of animal rescue or animal adoption, there are so many people that devote their lives to caring for animals. People do dog walking, pet sitting, and veterinarians is another area. Either people work as veterinarians or broadly in the veterinary field and they’re all highly attuned to animals. Of course, horse people work with horses and they’re very strong, intelligent, special animals and there's rituals and things. So, there's more here and it's just these weird, disenfranchised areas are like a double reality. They exist all around us, but we kind of have to ignore them unless you get into it a little bit. So, I would encourage people to push into it a little bit. I was trying to find the words for it, because I feel like it’s still very difficult and heavy. But, once you do some of this work like looking at all these models and all the different kinds of grief, it's like a divide and conquer kind of thing. I can divvy up all of my grief feelings into smaller, palatable or more understandable pieces, versus this massive grief that you can't understand. It just feels overwhelming. So yeah, that's what comes up.

Pihkala: Yeah, warm thanks for sharing that, Thomas and I strongly agree on trying to move forward from this sense of isolation, because as you say, there's many people who feel these things and with my work around types of loss and grief, I hope that people will take their time with it. It's a lot at first glance to think of all these concepts, but hopefully that might lead to developing a vocabulary which may help at discerning what kind of actions and practices might help in the case of certain kinds of losses. In these practical encounters with the topic and with other people, often I've had to experience beforehand that it's heavy and facilitate that. Because of my earlier life history, I've been facilitating a lot of funerals, for example, so I have certain sets of skills for that. But then afterwards, it's usually a very relieved atmosphere. So, there's a surprisingly powerful sense of relief and perhaps even something like honor after collectively doing this. So, I would encourage you listeners, whatever the types of loss and grief you feel in relation to other animals are, to experiment with engaging with those even though it may feel difficult at first. And I don't want to say that it's a guaranteed relief always, but there's that possibility that it may actually be strangely relieving.

Doherty: Yeah, well it's cathartic, right? It's not uncommon for people to have strong emotions or to cry or to emote so it does get the weight off of us. There might be a place of finding some peace or some grace with this kind of thing. It's all existential at the end of the day because we're all ultimately dealing with the limited life and death and our inevitability of our death, just how do we do it in an ethical way. So yeah, this is a difficult topic. It's a big, tough topic, but that's why we have to be courageous enough to bring it up here. And you cannot go toward happiness in the world without being able to feel all these other feelings. Otherwise, your happiness feels artificial, right? So, thanks for doing this, Panu. I'm going to share this with some of my family who might appreciate this. We'll put links in the show notes to these academic papers for folks that are working in the academic world but also just some of the images and simple things that you've shared for the public because I think it's a great public service. Well thanks Panu, let's wrap it up and listeners, I hope you took something important from this and it'll allow you to go easier in your life as you deal with these issues.

Pihkala: Thanks Thomas for another deep discussion and what you say might be a motto for the podcast. It's all existential at the end of the day. Take care people.

Doherty: Yeah, for sure. All right, take care. Bye.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

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