Man is the animal that places flowers on the graves of his neighbors. This is the point of the book The silence of the chimpanzees the Spanish philosopher Susana Monsó. The closest people don’t necessarily have to be blood relatives: people can mourn the loss of a partner, a cat, a politician or star, the six million victims of the Shoah or a starved child in Sudan for whom someone built a small altar. Being human also means knowing about death, its inevitability and its finality. But what about animals? Does an anthill know when an ant has died in the crowd? It can be observed that a dead ant is taken away – this is then referred to as necrophoresis. With these and many other examples at hand, Susana Monsó thinks about the question of what animals know about death. She is writing an important chapter in an area that has become increasingly important for years: she is a luminary in the field of animal philosophy.
