ANIMALS KILL THEMSELVES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 24 July 1929, Page 2

ANIMALS KILL THEMSELVES

"Do animals commit suicide?" is a question one sometimes hearp. A famous naturalist asserts that they do somefimes. Old age hfls 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 dop; has ended its sufferings 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 two ports of death it chose what, to it, was tin.' less obnoxious. Self-sacrifice has led some animals to kill themselves in certain circumstances in which, in their eyes, death must have seemed more desirable than life, ll 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 she could" have done them no good by immolating herself.