INSANITY IN ANIMALS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 740, 27 January 1915, Page 7

INSANITY IN ANIMALS.

Insanity in the human subject is supposed by some to have no aiaalogy in the lower animals. Yet many causes, according to a scientific writer, will lead to the permanent loss of self-con-trol. Cattle driven from the country through a crowded town will often work themselves into a frenzy. Horses have gone mad on the battlefield. At Balaclava an Arabian horse turned on its attendant as he was drawing water, seized him in his moufh, threw him down, and kneeling on him attacked him like an infuriated dog. He bit off another soldier's finger. An instance is related of a docile horse suddenly going mad on a hot day. Everything that came in its way it seized in its teeth and shook as a terrier does a rat. It raided the pigsties and threw the inmates one after another in the air, trampling on the bodies as they fell. Afterwards it almost killed its own master, after maiming for life the farrier who was called in. This must have been a case of insanity, the cause of which is often to be found in congenital malformations of the bones of the head. A scientist of authority even goes so far as to prove by what appears to be incontestable evidence that cats, dogs, and monkeys have been observed to. have delusions very similar to those of insane people.