Perhaps you flipped through the television channels one evening and stopped on a nature program because you could find nothing else worth your minuscule attention span.  As you listened to the narrator speaking about the African savanna and its many inhabitants, the focus slowly shifted to a herd of elephants and their struggle to survive the seemingly endless drought gripping the continent.

As you watched, the female leader of the group struggled to find water for her sisters and their children, including her own young child.  The search appeared futile in many cases.  It was then you pondered the fate of the clan.

But when the matriarch’s own daughter succumbed to the constant heat and malnutrition and dehydration, and when she laid down and was too weak to stand again, a tear welled up in your eye as you watched her mother lament with heartfelt cries.  She tried to help her daughter get back on her feet. . .to no avail.  Her sorrow rang out across the open land bringing the rest of the herd back to her side.

There they stood, young and old, sharing in a mother’s deep pain as she listened to her child’s last breaths faintly echoing goodbyes we barely understand.  You sat and watched, and finally you cried.

The elephants stood for some time over that lifeless body.  A mother’s tears wet the ground as she caressed her daughter gently, touching a life even as it ebbed away under a relentless sun.

When the time came to move on, you watched in amazement as each member of the herd stepped gently to the lifeless body and whispered silent regards for what was lost.  As they moved off into the distance, you recognized the heartbreak as a queen and mother turned time and again to look one last time, to wonder if she’d done all she could do, to see if maybe…just maybe a mistake had been made and her daughter was back on her feet after some needed rest.

Perhaps if you saw that, you came to realize what it looks like when elephants weep.  That spectacular display of emotion changed your view of nonhuman life for the better.

Yet only a few minutes later you again found yourself shocked into attention as the herd visited an elephant graveyard, an area where the bones of lost brethren lay scattered about the ground.  Your eyes could scarcely believe it as members of the herd paid their respects, some with gentle touches on a bone here or there, some with the silent swaying of those trying to contain sorrow that can’t be contained, and some with vocalizations that required no explanation.

Then the real shock came: You learned elephants always act this way around the remains of other elephants.  But more importantly, you also learned they demonstrate the same behavior for only one other species—humans.

At that moment, at that intersection between assumption and knowledge, perhaps you felt less disconnected from the natural world having seen that elephants respect our dead far more than we do theirs.  At the crossroads of true enlightenment, perhaps you finally knew what many have been saying for so long: Animals are emotional beings.  The evidence can been seen when you look into the eyes of a cat resting in your lap or a dog trotting by your side.  Most often, however, it’s harder to see, but it’s always true.

So then let us fast-forward to last month, to the reality of it all.  Let us face death and life together, but not through human eyes or events, at least not as central characters.

On September 11—what an appropriate date—in Denver, Colorado, “[a] male chow mix laid down in the middle of a busy street … to keep watch over its companion, a female German shepherd mix, after it was hit and killed by a car…”  Despite the imminent threat to its own life, one realized by several near misses as cars zoomed by carelessly, the dog stood its ground.  He simply didn’t want to leave the side of his fallen love.

Forlorn and ultimately defeated by animal control, he was taken away to a shelter for assessment.  No matter what other issues he might have, nothing can heal his broken heart.  It forever will rest in the middle of that road where a careless human struck and killed his mate.  It will forever rest at her side where he stood his ground in the face of heavy traffic, each metal monster coming nearer than the last until someone intervened.  There his heart forever will be.

Now let us fast-forward once again, or rewind if necessary, to a busy street in China, and let us set our eyes upon a very similar event.  “A dog was seen in the middle of [a] busy street watching over its friend, which had been hit by a car. It kept trying to wake its already-dead friend…”

The photos tell a story that words cannot encompass.  Especially the last image.

How we can make such an inhumane spectacle of the most humane act imaginable?  The very idea is beyond my comprehension.  Love poured out on that road as one dog struggled to revive and protect a fallen loved one.  One canine painted an image colored with the truest compassion, deep compassion from a reservoir we humans fail to appreciate or share.

Would you face such daunting odds under similar circumstances?  Would you stand against the threat of death itself so that you might stay at the side of one who’s fallen?  Are you willing to stand in the jaws of hell to protect your familiars?

There’s much to be learned from our animal cousins, especially when it comes to being humane.  You see, they have it mastered.  We don’t.