Elephants may mourn deaths, researchers found using YouTube videos

Researchers studying Asian elephants used an unexpected resource to learn about how the animal responds to death: YouTube. 

Rare behaviors in animals — like how they respond to the death of a species member — can be hard to document because they are just that: rare. So, it often takes being at the right place at the right time, scientists from the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science said in a study published Wednesday in Royal Society Open Science. 

To combat that, the researchers turned to videos uploaded to YouTube. Even though many of the videos are short and not conventional scientific observation, they nevertheless captured Asian elephants reacting to death, allowing researchers to identify several death-related behaviors, known as thanatological responses.