Do Animals Commit Suicide?
 

This just bugs me, I gotta know.

Yes. Well maybe not conciously.

One time we had a rabbit that kept eating our garden. So we put out a cage in hopes of catching it which we did. Well we planned to drive the rabbit out later in the day to dump it off in the country (far from our garden). Before we got the chance, a thunderstorm came along. Apparently the rabbit got so frightened by the thunderstorm that it repeatedly bashed itself against the cage until it basically throttled itself to death. When I went out there after the storm, well it wasn't a pretty sight and I felt pretty bad about it.

But, now you know.

Heard of a guinea pig starving itself to death after its mate died :(

Linky

"Despite the familiar myth of lemmings flinging themselves off cliffs, suicide is a rare phenomenon. Natural selection favors individuals that leave as many high-quality offspring as possible. A creature that kills itself before it reproduces leaves no descendants, so the genes for this behavior die out with their carrier. Mass migrations carried out by some animals, including the lemming and the wildebeest, may lead to accidental deaths but have nothing to do with suicide.

But suicidal behavior does occur. Among certain spider species, for instance, the mother sacrifices her body as a food source for her offspring. The female Australian crab spider reproduces by laying a sac full of tiny eggs. After her spiderlings hatch, the mother produces a second batch of eggs that are far too large to be laid. Her young bite into their mother to consume these eggs, eventually killing her. Similarly, the female Mediterranean spider feeds her offspring with a liquid that she regurgitates. Two weeks after they have hatched, the spiderlings feed directly on her body and suck their mother dry.

Why not save some resources for future reproductive attempts? My colleagues and I found these female spiders have so many natural enemies that their chances of surviving to reproduce again are extremely low, so they are better off investing all their resources in a single brood."

So apparently they do, surprised me.

My guinea did this after have his teeth filed down:(

I vaguely recall stories about primates in captivity that have refused to eat and starved to death.

I don't know if you can say for sure that they are consciously killing themselves though.

Islamic extremists commit suicide all the time.

So do Christian extremists.

Actually, a fundamentalist Christian wouldn't kill himself. Suicide is a sin.

What percentage of the time, after posting, do you say to yourself, "Man, I'm witty"?

Not as often as I'd like. I'd say I'm about a career .270 witty poster. I'm off today, because I've been at work since 5 am... so, I'm bound to whiff a few.

I would not consider these examples of suicide.
That is the way the spider reproduces, it has no choice.

Hey, you took me off ignore just for that! I'm touched.

lol.. when's the lame explananation coming, Frankie?

I'm stuck at the office since 5 am doing a SQL migration, and most of it is like watching paint dry... so I thought I'd amuse myself.

If Italians were animals they'd be possums. They'd make you think they're dead, only they get up 3 seconds later perfectly fine.

"They hit him with five shots, and he's still alive."

I don't see how any of you would consider Islamic Extremists anything other than animals. Are you actually defending what they do and have done?

Not the threadjack this, but I'm just curious.

"In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions. Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope of God's mercy and grace, their lives lose all value." ~ Jimmy Carter

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.

Look up 'animal' in the dictionary. Someone got smart and the topic got smart.

Jimmy Carter is an idiot, and I don't agree with that statement at all. Some people ARE nothing less that base animals, and deserve to be treated as such. This isn't dehumanizing them, it's accurately describing them.

an·i·mal Audio pronunciation of "animal" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-ml)
n.

1. A multicellular organism of the kingdom Animalia, differing from plants in certain typical characteristics such as capacity for locomotion, nonphotosynthetic metabolism, pronounced response to stimuli, restricted growth, and fixed bodily structure.
2. An animal organism other than a human, especially a mammal.
3. A person who behaves in a bestial or brutish manner.
4. A human considered with respect to his or her physical, as opposed to spiritual, nature.
5. A person having a specified aptitude or set of interests: “that rarest of musical animals, an instrumentalist who is as comfortable on a podium with a stick as he is playing his instrument” (Lon Tuck).


adj.

1. Relating to, characteristic of, or derived from an animal or animals: animal fat.
2. Relating to the physical as distinct from the spiritual nature of people: animal instincts and desires.


Sorry, still don't get it.

Wow, you have a shitty dictionary.

Edit: Actually, #1 will suffice.

#1 has nothing to do with extremist Christians commiting suicide

This thread just got rope-a-doped.

no kidding

Yeah, that's my fault. Sorry. :(

This thread is profound.

People having an interesting discussion, someone brings religion into it and suddenly people are at each others throats :rolleyes:

Yeah, actually, it was my fault. It didn't occur to me that the muslim suicide bombers have their apologists on this board. I suppose I should have known better.

I almost LOLd at your earlier post:


Think I would have done if you had left it at that ;)

It's a sin in Islam too.

You honestly have no perception of reality do you? I mean seriously, what the fuck is the malfunction in your brain? You made your own board just so you could talk about the shit you wanted to talk about, and when that doesn't work you come back over here and try to hijack as many fuckin threads as possible just so you have someplace, anyplace to spew your warped agenda. This is a thread about wether or not suicide is prevelant in the animal kingdom, not about muslims, christians, plant food, David Bowie, bowling or tampons. You are the epitomy of a troll.

Some girls I've known have called me a "manimal", and to answer your question, no I would never commit suicide.

Is it to late to predict this thread will not end well?

no

Since I started this, I'd like to end it ... by threadjacking this back to what it was initially. Again, my apologies for causing this to bust open.

I have 9 cats, and I hazard to believe any of them would commit suicide. It does bring up the point -- are they self-aware? I know they have fight or flight instincts, but is there more of a self-awareness outside of that instinct? It might bring some insight as to whether they would and in what circumstance they would kill themselves.

I don't think there's any way to know if cats, or any other species, have consciousness in the same way that humans do. My best guess is that there is a spectrum of "self-awareness". On one end are things like germs, trees, and then bugs, and then maybe cats and dogs, and then humans. Even in humans, it seems like there's a spectrum of "self-awareness".

fixed

People are people, and calling an entire segment of the world's second largest religion 'animals' is just plain ignorant. It's harmful because once you consider them animals and not human beings, you can do things like excuse the behavior at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, etc., because they aren't human beings being held without trial, forced to sodomize each other, or beaten to death, they are just animals. And Carter's point is that on some level it is necessary for those in the fight to consider them animals to do their job, but since you and I are nowhere near the fight it's counterproductive for us to do so.

nice, ice

There is actually a test that scientists do on animals to check if they are self-aware: they'll place dye on their forehead, place the animal in front of a mirror, and see if they try to take the dye off while looking at their reflection. IIRC, apes and dolphins are the only ones to consistently pass this test, but I may be wrong.

Interesting topic, and I'd be happy to discuss it with you, just not on this thread. I hope you understand I'm not ignoring you, just fixing my threadjacking from earlier.

I've heard of that test; my impression is that most scientists think it doesn't prove anything at all about consciousness.

Specifically chimpanzees. Most other apes and monkeys don't.

Lighten up, Francis.

I make one joke about suicide bombers, and all of a sudden I'm an anti-arab propoganda machine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

Looks like Chimps, Bonobos, Orangutans, Dolphins and Humans pass consistantly.

Wait wait - you expect Franklin to know what the fuck he's talking about ?

Right... because we have Christian fundamentalists blowing themselves up on a daily basis.