ANCESTRAL WISDOM · ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Think of nature and you probably think of its animals. They are often our most direct connection to the living world, and they can fill us with wonder. They can also be teachers. This is what animals teach us about spirituality, about ourselves, and about the web of life we belong to: lessons in grief, in care for the young, and in community. Some come from science. Some come from my own life. I have tried to mark which is which.
3 Things I Learned from Spending 5 Months in Uganda
I learned that helping people feel better, feeding hunger, and enjoying time with people of different cultures can all happen at once. No matter what your goal is, spending time with people whose lives differ from yours gives you new perspectives. All I ever wanted was a project with a few clear-cut boundaries, but when I let go of that, my true path was revealed. All I needed to do was put one foot in front of the other.
Elephants and the Ways We Mourn
Elephants react strongly to the remains of their own kind. In African elephants show high levels of interest in the skulls and ivory of their own species, Karen McComb, Lucy Baker and Cynthia Moss describe elephants investigating bones and tusks with their trunks and feet, sometimes long after the animal has died. In choice tests with free-ranging elephants in Amboseli, Kenya, the elephants spent more time with elephant skulls and ivory than with natural objects or the skulls of buffalo and rhinoceros. Ivory drew the most attention of all.
The researchers are careful about what this means. Families did not show a significant preference for their own matriarch’s skull, so the study does not prove that elephants recognize a specific relative. It also calls the idea of an “elephant graveyard” a myth. Even so, Carl Safina’s The Depths of Animal Grief (NOVA, 2015) gathers accounts of elephants staying with their dead for days, and of a mother who stayed with a stillborn calf for four days. We do not need to claim more than the science says to feel what these stories ask of us. They invite us to slow down when someone dies, to touch what remains, and to let grief take the time it takes.
Science is also asking whether grief and memory travel through the body across generations. Research on epigenetics and ancestral memory suggests our ancestors’ experiences may live on in us.
Dogs Taught Me the Importance of Priorities
My dog Achilles had an illness called Fanconi Syndrome. I had to give him medication twice a day, and it made him drool uncontrollably. So I would go to his food bowl in advance and place a small towel under it to catch the drool. One day I had an important meeting. I figured that if I came home early enough to give Achilles his medication, I could still attend, and everything would be fine. When I got home afterward, with five minutes to spare, my room was soaked and the towel was nowhere to be found. Maybe I should have stayed home? The love of an animal that depends on us has a way of asking what we truly put first.
Computers Taught Me Why We Need Empathy Machines. Will They Work?
For years I used my laptop as a makeshift empathy machine. A few minutes of social media each day made me feel connected to family and friends. I had reasons for feeling less than whole. Growing up without my father most of the time left me struggling with self-confidence as an adult, and the computer filled in some blanks. Then one night it occurred to me that if I really wanted to connect with others, I might need to put the laptop down. Technology will not fix our problems. People will, myself included, online and off. It is worth sitting with the irony that as the rise of AI reshapes how we perceive animal intelligence, no machine has yet learned to mourn the way an elephant does.
The elephant family walks together, and so do we. Ubuntu Village stands with the communities in Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria who do the same.
GIVE TO THE VILLAGEKangaroos Taught Me to Rethink Our Place in Nature
Kangaroos are rarely considered spiritual animals. I had seen so many on television that I thought I knew what to expect. Then one day I watched a mother kangaroo with her joey hopping after her, and my perspective changed. Their bodies look strange and awkward, especially in motion, yet the family they belong to is old. Researchers at Murdoch University and Flinders University report that macropods, the kangaroo family, have been around for at least 30 million years. Our species has been here for a small fraction of that time. If we think we can do better than lineages that have lasted that long, we may need to reevaluate our position in relation to nature. We are not the pinnacle of life on earth. There is much out there besides us.
Grief Is Not Only Human
Safina’s NOVA article, The Depths of Animal Grief, offers more examples. Sifaka lemurs in one family returned to a body fourteen times over five days. A killer whale pushed her dead newborn for about six hours off San Juan Island in 2010. A chimpanzee in Uganda “went into mourning” after the death of an ally. The article uses anthropologist Barbara J. King’s working definition: survivors must change their routines. That is a careful standard, and it is also a humble one. It does not decide what these animals feel. It asks us to pay attention.
This is one way to hold what animals teach us about spirituality: attention as a form of reverence. If you would like a practice for it, we gathered 8 tips to raise your vibrations and co-exist with wildlife. Many African traditions have long understood animals as teachers, totems and ancestral guides. We explore that in spirit animals, totems and ancestral guides in African traditions. Ubuntu says I am because we are. The animals that live in families and communities remind us that no one grieves, or heals, alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Elephants react strongly to the remains of their own species, investigating bones and tusks with their trunks and feet, sometimes long after death. Researchers still debate how much this reflects recognition of a specific individual. One study in Amboseli, Kenya found elephants were drawn to elephant skulls and ivory in general.
No. The researchers who studied elephants’ interest in skulls and ivory describe the elephant graveyard as a myth. Concentrations of bones can be explained by hunting or drought die-offs.
Observers have reported grief-like behavior in chimpanzees, sifaka lemurs, killer whales and other species. Scientists often use a cautious definition, such as whether survivors change their routines after a death.
Many African traditions understand animals as teachers, totems and ancestral guides. That is a cultural and spiritual framework, not a scientific claim, and we share it with respect for the traditions that carry it.
Ubuntu holds that a person is a person through other people: I am because we are. Social animals such as elephants and chimpanzees live through their relationships, and many of us find in that a reflection of Ubuntu. It is our interpretation, not a scientific finding.
Community is the medicine.
Animals have been teaching us Ubuntu values for millennia: care for the young, mourning the lost, protecting the whole. Ubuntu Village carries these lessons forward in our communities. Please support our work.
Partner With UsIf this reminded you of an animal who taught you something about love or loss, share it with someone who carries that story too.
Sources
- African elephants show high levels of interest in the skulls and ivory of their own species, McComb, Baker and Moss, Biology Letters, 2006
- The Depths of Animal Grief, Carl Safina, NOVA Next (PBS), 2015, excerpted from Beyond Words
- Kangaroo evolution maps climate change, Murdoch University and Flinders University researchers, Phys.org, 2014
- Fanconi Syndrome in Dogs, VCA Animal Hospitals
Related Reading
- Your Grandmother’s Strength Lives in Your Cells: Epigenetics and the Science of Ancestral Memory
- The Rise of AI and Its Effect on Our Perception of Animal Intelligence
- 8 Tips to Raise Your Vibrations & Co-Exist with Wildlife
- Spirit Animals, Totems, and Ancestral Guides: Animal Wisdom Across African Traditions
Michele Mitchell is the Founder, President & CEO of Ubuntu Village Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. A writer, advocate, and community strategist working at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, public health, and community power, Michele leads Ubuntu Village’s work to center communities as the protagonists of their own healing. She writes from the conviction that science and spirit are complementary, that healing is relational, and that community is the medicine. Read more about Michele, or connect with her on LinkedIn.