According to the American Association for the advancement of science, Sanjeeta Pokharel only observed one example of Asian elephants mourning their dead in the wild after four years of fieldwork in India.
The journal said that some of her colleagues who had spent decades observing wild elephants only witnessed the grief of the animals.
A team of scientists from the Indian Institute of Science's Centre for Ecological Sciences tried something new and turned to the internet for help.
Science.org said the team was able to find a lot of new data by searching for terms like Asian elephant death and elephant response to death.
The paper was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
The researchers observed the mourning behaviors in the elephants.
According to The New York Times, elephants sniffing and touching carcasses with their trunks, shaking the dead with their legs, and kicking dying calves in an attempt to revive them, were seen.
The New York Times reported that the elephants trumpeted and roared in response to the deaths, and held a vigil for lost members of their herd by staying near the bodies and chasing away curious humans.
In one case, an elephant used their trunks to pat their friends on the head, and in another, a calf cuddled with its dying mother.
Pokharel told the newspaper that adult female elephants were carrying dead calves. The New York Times reported that it was observed in five cases.
According to Science.org, the elephants could be seen carrying their babies through the forests for days at a time.
The work is part of a growing field called comparative thanatology.
The method of making videos is called iEcology. Online resources can be used to generate ecological insights.
Pokharel told The New York Times that the research into how elephants mourn will be helpful.
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