Do Animals Believe In Supernatural Beings?

Jon writes:She bows to me each morning in order that I feed her.

Straggler writes:And before you ask me to define "religious behaviour" here is what I mean by a broad definition of religion: "having or showing belief in and reverence for a deity".

Jon writes:She bows to me each morning in order that I feed her.

Straggler writes:So what examples do you have (definitions aside for one moment?)

Phage writes:The ritual attention paid to the dead by apes and elephants, as well as the hierarchical social structure involved, seems to qualify as "religious" in the broadest sense of the term.

Straggler writes:Haven't found anything similar on apes. Do you have any links for that?

*Multiple sites. Gorillas are known to hold wakes for dead friends; zoos have cermonialized this. Donna Fernandes reports that at Franklin
Park Zoo, Boston, ten years ago, after a female Babs died of cancer, her longtime mate said ‘good-bye’: ‘He was howling and banging his
chest,and he picked up a piece of her favorite foodceleryand put it in her hand and tried to get her to wake up. I was weeping it was so
emotional.’ Later the zoo held a funeral, similarly moving. As reported by the local news, gorilla family members ‘one by onefiled into’
the room where ‘Babs’s body lay’, approaching their ‘beloved leader’ and ‘gently sniffing the body.’ In addition to gorillas holding wakes,
baboons are known to seek the comfort of friends after deaths in their family. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania
She} began grooming with a female of much lower
status, behavior that would otherwise be beneath her’ (Bekoff 2007).

This is just from the "Chimp Spirit Database" linked at the start of the thread.

frako writes:I go to many a funeral thoug i do not belive in a soul or a god there is nothing supernatural for me about it.

Who said anything about supernatural? I thought we agreed we weren't talking about that

Do Animals Believe In Supernatural Beings?

Phage writes:Who said anything about supernatural? I thought we agreed we weren't talking about that.

No dude. She is showing you he ass and saying "If you don't supply me with food I will shit on your pillow".

And to instead look for signs of animal behaviour that are comparable to human behaviour in the context of religious or supernatural beliefs in the widest sense.

Jon writes:If this doesn't make me supernatural to my cat, what would?

Jon writes:She doesn't have to respect me to believe that I am supernatural.