ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the longstanding uncertainty around animals’ awareness of their own mortality. While humans may believe they hold a monopoly on understanding the inevitability and meaning of death, there is growing evidence that some animals do in fact have an awareness of death. However, humans still control not only the time of death but also whether it is a good or bad death for many animals. This may be partly dependent on perceptions of the animal’s worthiness and emotional capacity. The debate around the ethics of killing animals and the extent to which death harms an animal if they have no awareness of its meaning is contrasted with arguments that death can still be harmful in the absence of concept of death. Evidence that animals must recognise and respond to death within their social setting for survival reasons supports the notion that many animals do understand the finality of death. For social animals, death does not just belong to the individual due to the implications for other members of the community.
