ANIMALS KILL THEMSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 10 (Supplement)

ANIMALS KILL THEMSELVES.

"Do animals commit suicide?" is a question one sometimes hears. A famous naturalist asserts that they do sometimes. Old age has led many a dog to voluntarily shuffle off this mortal coil. One such instance was observed in Scotland, when an old collie was seen to leave its home, walk a couple of miles to the shore, and deliberately leap into the sea. To escape the tortures of apparently incurable suffering, animals will sometimes end their lives. Many an injured dog has ended its suffering by drowning. An animal at bay or in despair will sometimes commit suicide rather than allow itself to fall into an enemy's hands. A buck elk deliberately ' jumped over a precipice in Ceylon, as if of the two sorts of death it chose what, to it, was the less obnoxious. Selfsacrifice has led some animals to kill themselves in certain circumstances in which, in their eyes, death have been more desirable than life. It is a proved fact that the stork has been known to perish in a conflagration rather than desert her young, even though she knew that ehe could have done them no good by immolating herself.