Nature & Nurture #146: Dr. Susana Monsó - How Animals Understand Death

The Nature & Nurture Podcast

Dr. Susana Monsó is a philosopher, animal ethicist, and author of Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death.

In this episode, we discuss how different animals grieve, how opossums fake death, why predators play with their prey, why dogs sometimes eat their deceased owners as a sign of love, and human rituals surrounding death. We discuss how this topic connects to interdisciplinary areas in philosophy, including animal sentience, the ethics of factory farmed food, moral utilitarianism and its pitfalls, the neuroscience of care and pain, and the moral responsibility that co-evolves with social intelligence.