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Do animals have religions?
I was out to dinner with my husband and the question just popped into my head- every human civilization has independently developed religions and I was just wondering everything we don’t know about the animal world as we can’t communicate with them.
My husband thought this was an absurd thought.
My train of thought is:
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animals can communicate ? Yes
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so they can probably tell each other stories
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do they hear about ancestors?
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about that really bad ass killer whale that was sinking ship in portugal
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the story gets passed down through generations
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so they have legends, so their version of achilles and apollo
I don’t know this might be stupid- it just always strikes me as too ego-centric to assume we know everything about animals. The point of the question wasnt really if animals have a religion, more- i wonder everything we dont know about them.
It just reminds me of that quote “if we judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will always think its an idiot “
I am really curious about what others think! Especially those that study animals
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As far as science goes, we don't have proof that any animals can grasp the concept of "stories" or things that are more metaphysical than literal. So we have no proof they could even conceive of the idea of religion. However, we do have evidence of several species having distinct languages, sometimes even with regional accents (dolphins, pigs, elephants). We also have evidence that some species "mourn" their dead (I can only think of elephants & crows in particular atm). And of course we have evidence of animals passing knowledge down the generations like migration routes and local knowledge of areas they travel in. But animal brains don't work exactly the same as our brains so we can't say for certain why they do those things. Scientists have even observed some elephants waving their trunks and branches at the moon but we dont know why theyre doing it. Could we find out in the future that a species has developed a kind of religion? It's quite possible, but we just don't have the evidence or necessary tools to identify/confirm that evidence. I'm a believer that a lot of species are way more intelligent & complex than most people give them credit for but I'd still need pretty strong evidence to be convinced.
Dogs and cats have multiple times been seen mourning their deceased owners and "siblings". Showing they at least have some way to understand the difference between being gone versus being completely gone.
The closest thing I can think of as animals having rituals is that bird from New Guinea & a few other birds too. Lots of animals give each other gifts & have elaborate mating rituals. Seems as if they worship each other.
Elephants seem to mourn the dead, isn’t that like a religious ceremony
No, it's an instinct, a curiosity. Considering this action of mauling the bones of the dead elephants aren't necessary by an elephant that knew the dead elephant I'd say a generalized instinct. At best, the contemplation of it's own mortality and possibly remembering friendships/other elephants that no longer exist. Region? No!. Even atheists mourn lost friends and family.
Yeah animals having religious views totally makes sense as a sound hypothesis for the following reasons:
one of the most solid hypotheses on where human religions come from is based on the structure of our brains (two hemispheres, corpus callosum. Most animals have a similar structure
for example dolphins have 25mil-34mil years of spoken language culture. This seems to be enough for development of mystical thought