Are Animals Suicidal?

[chiggerwood]

Well my Dog slit her wrist in the bathtub last week, but she cut across the street, so I think it was just a cry for help. If she were serious she would have gone down the road. She's such a drama queen.

In all seriousness though there is this one bridge that dogs tend to jump off of until they die I can't remember where it is though

 

[PwnSt0nes]

I don't think so. Remember, their rules are different from ours, and death without pain seems better than life with pain.

I'm sorry i dont understand. Rules are different?

 

[tahrey]

I think I saw a frog crawl into a drain it's got no hope of getting back out of this morning.

But that's maybe not suicide ... perhaps just being terminally misinformed and lacking the cognotive ability to recognise the danger, or responding to instinctive drives that become destructive in a human-infested environment. That and it only being about 3'c outside at that point, so it's incredible that it was even able to move (it was incredibly sluggish - first sighting, to being in the drain maybe 3-4 yards away, took a good 5 minutes), let alone conduct any kind of meaningful mental processing.

 

[PwnSt0nes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L53Re1PThM


hehehe my friend i was talking about filmed this.

 

[Macgyvercas]

Would you count lemmings as suicidal, or just very stupid?

 

[elbrandino]

I believe super intelligent animals (by animal standards anyways), such as dolphins, can be suicidal. I saw a video once in school where a dolphin drowned itself.

 

[Quaidis]

Skipper the dolphin, also known as Cathy, committed suicide in front of her trainer (who later talks about it in The Cove.) She was wild-caught and shipped to the trainer, and just gradually became more and more depressed. Finally she swam to the trainer, looked up at him, and opening her breathing hole underwater - thus drowning. There was nothing wrong with her, she just... Did it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicky-collins/can-dolphins-commit-suici_b_592856.html

Supposedly dolphin suicide is extremely common in wild-caught theme-park dolphins (and related creatures). They just get to a point where they stop eating or just give up and drown.



I have also seen lizards starve to death (not my own, but other owners who don't know jack shit). Though that's not straight suicide. They aren't jumping onto sharp sticks or anything like that. But some species of pet gecko, and other types of reptile, will get stressed - usually through the owner giving them no places to hide or constantly messing with them - and then refuse to eat due to it. They then, should the stressing continue, just starve to death. And this isn't in a week, a gecko can starve itself for months before it finally dies. The golden gecko is a good example, as they are naturally stubborn. I adopted one wild-caught in 2005 and he refused to eat. I had to treat him for parasites and even after the treatment he refused to eat. I had to forcefeed him for 3 months before he finally ate on his own, and it took him about a year before he became comfortable enough to come out of hiding. That bastard was stubborn and just trying to die. Even now, as healthy and robust as he is, if something upsets him enough he'll go off food for a few days.

Some species of bird will commit suicide. It's usually related to depression if a mating pair should be separated, as some birds mate for life. One is killed and the other stays around the dead mate for a while, then either stops eating or just doesn't migrate and dies of the cold.

 

[AgDr_ODST]

Well I mean there's that bridge that all the dogs like to kill themselves on.

Link [http://www.cracked.com/article/181_the-6-creepiest-places-earth/]

well i did have a response but it all went caput when I clicked the above link.....Im really not sure what to think now!

 

[NezumiiroKitsune]

Depression is common in some house hold mammalian pets when they're left alone, however you have to remember animals don't grasp the concept of mortality, indeed most aren't self aware with the exclusion of very high tier primates, possibly dolphins and some other high EQ range animals. Since they don't acknowledge their own mortality and are not self aware, they don't have the facalties necessary to consider suicide. So I'd say no.

I'd consider however the implication lower tier class animals and less intelligent mammals may have adopted suicide-like adaptations to cope with population numbers or some other environmental factor. It's difficult to say though, I've never heard of it. Certainly however, they wouldn't kill themselves for the same reason an intelligent animal would would is self aware.