To the Editor:

If Natalie Angier’s article was trying to show how animals are different from people in their attitude toward death, I think it achieved just the opposite. It showed — in a very informative and vivid way — how animals, like people, are confused beings not equipped to cope with the concept of death. The last line of the article, intended to show how perhaps elephants don’t quite get death after all, is a word for word description of what human grief is: ”They were saying goodbye, or maybe, Won’t you please come back home?” Eyal Nevo

New York

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