Will my dog really be sad when I die? Science can’t answer that question ... yet

Bear had sat in the same spot of her Baltimore home for three days, maybe more – without food, water or even a toilet break, according to the animal shelter that later took her in. A 12-year-old mutt with a greying muzzle, the dog was found “lying loyally” by her deceased owner’s side in early June, the shelter said on Facebook, “just quietly mourning.”

Bear’s tale, which ended happily with the dog’s adoption, was only the latest iteration of a story that has long captured imaginations: the grieving, loyal dog waiting in vain for its dead – or fled – owner.

In the 1920s, the protagonist was Hachiko, an Akita who greeted his owner at a Tokyo train station every evening and then, according to the story, continued to show up every day for a decade after the man’s death. In 2015, a Russian dog made headlines for appearing “like clockwork” every morning at the reception area of the hospital where her owner had died two years earlier, according to the British news site Metro.

In March this year, reports circulated about another Russian dog that had stayed for a year at the spot where his owner had died in a car crash; he became known as the “Siberian Hachiko”. In April, an “Ecuadorian Hachiko” emerged, in the form of a dog that would not leave the earthquake-ruined home where its owner had perished.