A philosopher journeys into the world of comparative thanatology, which explores how animals of all kinds respond to death and dying.In the summer of 2018, off the coast of British Columbia, an orca named Tahlequah gave birth. When the calf died after just half an hour, Tahlequah refused to let go. For more than two weeks, she carried her calf’s body around, often balancing it on her nose as she swam.The story went viral, which came as no surprise to Susana Monsó, a philosopher of animal minds at the National Distance Education University in Madrid. Despite the vast chasm that seems to separate humans and killer whales, this orca mother was behaving in a way that was profoundly relatable.“This idea of a mother clinging on to the corpse of her baby for 17 days seems like something we can understand, something we can relate to, for those of us who have experienced loss,” Dr. Monsó said.Of course, projecting our own human experiences onto other species can be a tricky business, and scientists often warn about the mistakes we can make when we engage in this sort of anthropomorphism. But we can also be misled by our tendency to assume that many cognitive and emotional traits are unique to humans, Dr. Monsó said. And in her new book, “Playing Possum,” she argues that a variety of animal species have at least a rudimentary concept of death.Dr. Monsó spoke with The New York Times about her work. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Like most countries, the U.S. has no comprehensive national system for monitoring disease in companion animals — which leaves pets and people at risk.Trupanion, a Seattle-based pet insurance company, is partnering with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create a disease tracking system for pets, the company announced this week. The system will draw on insurance claims submitted to Trupanion in real time when sick dogs and cats visit the veterinarian.“The concept is to proactively detect potential threats to pets and public health,” said Dr. Steve Weinrauch, the chief veterinary and product officer at Trupanion.The effort, which also includes academic scientists and other companies in the pet industry, is still in its early stages. Initially, it will focus on bird flu, a virus that has been spreading through American dairy cows and spilling over into domestic cats.“This is a really important public-private partnership that is going to help fill some important gaps,” said Dr. Casey Barton Behravesh, who directs the C.D.C.’s One Health Office, which focuses on the connections between human, animal and environmental health.It’s one of several ongoing efforts to address such gaps, which extend far beyond bird flu. Like most other countries, the United States has no comprehensive national system for tracking diseases in pets. While the C.D.C. is charged with protecting human health and the Department of Agriculture focuses on farm animals, companion animals tend to fall through the cracks.“This is a population that is a little bit lost in the shuffle,” said Dr. Jennifer Granick, a veterinary internist at the University of Minnesota, who is one of the founders of a separate effort to create a disease surveillance system for pets.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The outbreak may be the first ever documented in marine mammals.For the last three years, scientists in South Africa have been trying to unravel a grim marine mystery: What was happening to the Cape fur seals?The boisterous marine mammals, which are common along the nation’s shores, began washing up dead in enormous numbers. Pregnant females delivered dead premature pups. And some seals began displaying unusually aggressive behavior, attacking humans, dogs and each other.Some scientists suspected that a neurotoxin produced by algae might be to blame. In recent weeks, however, another specter has come into focus: rabies.So far, 17 seals have tested positive for the virus, said Tess Gridley, a founding director of Sea Search Research and Conservation, who has been investigating the seal deaths. The cases, which date back to at least August 2022 and span hundreds of miles of coastline, may be the first sustained rabies outbreak ever documented in marine mammals.“What I’m doing here is sitting here and putting together all the reports of aggressive interactions between seals and dogs and seals and people in the past few years,” Dr. Gridley said. “And it’s telling quite a scary story.”Rabies, which is nearly always fatal once symptoms occur, spreads through the saliva of infected animals. So far, no human cases have been reported, but, according to Dr. Gridley’s tally, at least 72 people in South Africa have been bitten or scratched by Cape fur seals since 2021; eight have been bitten by seals since confirmed to have rabies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A new study paints a complex picture of the outbreak, suggesting that the virus could be spreading in multiple ways and that it is not always mild in cows.As the bird flu outbreak in dairy cows has ballooned, officials have provided repeated reassurances: The virus typically causes mild illness in cows, they have said, and because it spreads primarily through milk, it can be curbed by taking extra precautions when moving cows and equipment.A new study, published in Nature on Tuesday, presents a more complex picture.Some farms have reported a significant spike in cow deaths, according to the paper, which investigated outbreaks on nine farms in four states. The virus, known as H5N1, was also present in more than 20 percent of nasal swabs collected from cows. And it spread widely to other species, infecting cats, raccoons and wild birds, which may have transported the virus to new locations.“There’s probably multiple pathways of spread and dissemination of this virus,” said Diego Diel, a virologist at Cornell University and an author of the study. “I think it will be really difficult to control it at this point.”The outbreak, which officials first announced in March, has spread to at least 170 dairy farms in 13 states, according to the Department of Agriculture. It has also jumped into poultry farms and infected at least 10 farmworkers exposed to infected cows or poultry.The exact origins of the outbreak remain unknown, but scientists believe that the version of H5N1 that is now circulating in dairy herds probably jumped into cows just once, most likely in late 2023 in the Texas Panhandle.In the new study, the scientists focused on nine farms — five in Texas, two in New Mexico and one each in Kansas and Ohio — that reported outbreaks between Feb. 11 and March 19. When they analyzed samples of the virus taken from affected farms, they found that those samples were closely related to one collected from an infected wild skunk in New Mexico in February.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

This article is part of our Pets special section on scientists’ growing interest in our animal companions.Every dog has its day, and July 14, 2004, belonged to a boxer named Tasha. On that date, the National Institutes of Health announced that the barrel-chested, generously jowled canine had become the first dog to have her complete genome sequenced. “And everything has kind of exploded since then,” said Elaine Ostrander, a canine genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute, who was part of the research team.In the 20 years since, geneticists have fallen hard for our canine companions, sequencing thousands upon thousands of dogs, including pedigreed purebreds, mysterious mutts, highly trained working dogs, free-ranging village dogs and even ancient canine remains.Research on canine cognition and behavior has taken off, too. “Now dog posters are taking up half of an animal behavior conference,” said Monique Udell, who directs the human-animal interaction lab at Oregon State University. “And we’re starting to see cat research following that same trend.”Just a few decades ago, many researchers considered pets to be deeply unserious subjects. (“I didn’t want to study dogs,” said Alexandra Horowitz, who has since become a prominent researcher in the field of canine cognition.) Today, companion animals are absolutely in vogue. Scientists around the world are peering deep into the bodies and minds of cats and dogs, hoping to learn more about how they wriggled their way into our lives, how they experience the world and how to keep them living in it longer. It’s a shift that some experts say is long overdue.“We have a responsibility to deeply understand these animals if we’re going to live with them,” Dr. Udell said. “We also have this great potential to learn a lot about them and a lot about ourselves in the process.”Pet projectsFor geneticists, dogs and cats are both rich subjects, given their long, close history with humans and their susceptibility to many of the same diseases, from cancer to diabetes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Cats are more social than they are often given credit for. Can you help yours access its inner dog?By Graham RoumieuThis article is part of our Pets special section on scientists’ growing interest in our animal companions.Over the last two decades, a flurry of scientific studies have demonstrated, over and over again, that dogs are social savants, highly attuned to human cues.But even as canine cognitive science flourished, few researchers bothered to probe the social skills of cats. After all, dogs were descended from the social gray wolf and had been intentionally engineered to perform specific roles alongside humans. Cats, on the other hand, were descended from the solitary African wildcat and had not been under the same selective pressure from people. They were viewed as antisocial and also, for good measure, uncooperative, making them unappealing research subjects.In recent years, however, a handful of undeterred scientists have produced a small body of research suggesting that we have underestimated cats’ social skills, and that interest is growing. “I see more and more papers each year,” said Kristyn Vitale, an animal behavior scientist at Unity Environmental University in Maine. “We’ve just got a lot of catching up to do.”Dr. Vitale, who has three cats of her own, often collaborates with Monique Udell, the director of the human-animal interaction lab at Oregon State University. Dr. Vitale spoke to The New York Times about their research — and about her dream study of cat cognition.The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.What do people tend to get wrong about cats?The biggest thing that I see is people stating that cats are not social creatures, or that social interaction isn’t important for cats. Cats are really flexible with their social behavior. So it’s highly individual, and based off the cat and their personal experiences.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

At first, it was hard to tell whether something was really wrong with Rover. The 10-year-old yellow Lab had always been a bit of a loafer, so when he refused to get up from the rug last February, it was not entirely out of character. But then he declined a treat.“That was when we were like, ‘We have a very sick dog on our hands,’” said Hilary O’Hollaren of Portland, Ore.Ms. O’Hollaren’s husband rushed Rover to DoveLewis Veterinary Emergency and Specialty Hospital, where doctors had grave news: The dog had a tumor on his spleen. Worse, it had ruptured, causing massive internal bleeding. Without a blood transfusion, Rover had just hours to live.The couple quickly gave their consent, and the transfusion bought enough time for further diagnostic testing. The veterinarians discovered that although Rover had an aggressive form of cancer, which would eventually recur, it had not yet metastasized. So they removed Rover’s spleen and sent him home to live out his final months with his family.“We’re just really so grateful that there was even the option of having that transfusion,” Ms. O’Hollaren said. “We’re just trying to make every day the best day ever for him.”All kinds of ailments — including injuries, infectious diseases, immune conditions and cancer — can leave a pet in desperate need of blood, and transfusion has become an increasingly routine part of veterinary care.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A few “reasonable precautions” can help people keep their pets safe from the H5N1 virus, experts say.Over the past few months, a bird flu outbreak has spread swiftly through dairy cows in the United States, infecting more than 90 herds in 12 states. Along the way, the virus has caused collateral damage in several other species, spreading from dairies to poultry farms and from cows into at least three farm workers, who developed symptoms of mild illness.It has also caused mounting casualties in cats. On some dairy farms, sick or dead cats have provided an early signal that something was amiss. “They’re a bit of a canary in a coal mine,” Dr. Kammy Johnson, a veterinary epidemiologist for the Agriculture Department, said at a news briefing on Thursday.Since the dairy outbreak was first detected in late March, at least 21 cats in nine states have caught the virus, according to the department, which recently began tracking the feline cases.Scientists have long known that cats are vulnerable to being infected by avian influenza, a group of flu viruses typically found in birds. In 2020, a new version of a bird flu virus, known as H5N1, emerged. It has spread rapidly around the world, infecting many wild birds and repeatedly spilling over into mammals, including cats.“Domestic cats are actually highly susceptible to avian influenza, and especially H5N1,” said Kristen Coleman, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Maryland. “But there has been a recent uptick in domestic cat infections, a drastic uptick.”There have been sporadic reports of infected dogs, too.While bird flu infections of pets remain rare overall, they can be severe, especially in cats. “It results in very severe illness and oftentimes death,” Dr. Coleman said. “So it’s very serious, and it should be taken seriously.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Half a century ago, one of the hottest questions in science was whether humans could teach animals to talk. Scientists tried using sign language to converse with apes and trained parrots to deploy growing English vocabularies.The work quickly attracted media attention — and controversy. The research lacked rigor, critics argued, and what seemed like animal communication could simply have been wishful thinking, with researchers unconsciously cuing their animals to respond in certain ways.In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the research fell out of favor. “The whole field completely disintegrated,” said Irene Pepperberg, a comparative cognition researcher at Boston University, who became known for her work with an African gray parrot named Alex.Today, advances in technology and a growing appreciation for the sophistication of animal minds have renewed interest in finding ways to bridge the species divide. Pet owners are teaching their dogs to press “talking buttons” and zoos are training their apes to use touch screens.In a cautious new paper, a team of scientists outlines a framework for evaluating whether such tools might give animals new ways to express themselves. The research is designed “to rise above some of the things that have been controversial in the past,” said Jennifer Cunha, a visiting research associate at Indiana University.The paper, which is being presented at a science conference on Tuesday, focuses on Ms. Cunha’s parrot, an 11-year-old Goffin’s cockatoo named Ellie. Since 2019, Ms. Cunha has been teaching Ellie to use an interactive “speech board,” a tablet-based app that contains more than 200 illustrated icons, corresponding to words and phrases including “sunflower seeds,” “happy” and “I feel hot.” When Ellie presses on an icon with her tongue, a computerized voice speaks the word or phrase aloud.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Biodiversity loss, global warming, pollution and the spread of invasive species are making infectious diseases more dangerous to organisms around the world.Several large-scale, human-driven changes to the planet — including climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the spread of invasive species — are making infectious diseases more dangerous to people, animals and plants, according to a new study.Scientists have documented these effects before in more targeted studies that have focused on specific diseases and ecosystems. For instance, they have found that a warming climate may be helping malaria expand in Africa and that a decline in wildlife diversity may be boosting Lyme disease cases in North America.But the new research, a meta-analysis of nearly 1,000 previous studies, suggests that these patterns are relatively consistent around the globe and across the tree of life.“It’s a big step forward in the science,” said Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University, who was not an author of the new analysis. “This paper is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that I think has been published that shows how important it is health systems start getting ready to exist in a world with climate change, with biodiversity loss.”In what is likely to come as a more surprising finding, the researchers also found that urbanization decreased the risk of infectious disease.The new analysis, which was published in Nature on Wednesday, focused on five “global change drivers” that are altering ecosystems across the planet: biodiversity change, climate change, chemical pollution, the introduction of nonnative species and habitat loss or change.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.