SUICIDE AMONG ANIMALS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 4, Issue 1055, 22 April 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

SUICIDE AMONG ANIMALS.

(N, Y. Sun,) " Ono more unfortunate," the possessor of ft number of questionable pots said, fishing out a limp, long-tailed monster from a glass tank,' _ " Old age," the reporter suggested feel, ingly. "No," ho ropliod, scratching -tho' back of the insectivorous cadaver with his microscopo, " Suicide." "You don't mean that the bug killed itself ?" "I do," tho naturalist said; "it was a clear caso of suicidoand thero seemed to be a tromor in his voice as he poised the remains over a bottle of alcohol, dropped it in, and pasted on the obituary, which read; "Hie jacet Buthus Caroliniamts," "It's only a scorpion," ho continued, ■ "I have kept the thing for over a year, and had quite domesticated it. Yes, it would holding up a finger that looked like a Sicfeel pear, "but it was tame, for a scorpion; I usually fed it on cockroaches, and spent a good deal of timo watching it kill otlior animals, I have seen it strike an Aldermanie croton bug dead in n second with .its ■ sting, and then slowly tear it apart-with its crablike claws," • . " But what made it commit suicide ?"

" Just what has caused a good many poor wretches to do the same. I have heard that thoy would kill themselves on provocation; so' to test it I tried starvation, and kept it in this glass jar for more than six weess, It gradually grow sluggish, even abstaining from water, and finally, after beating Tanner by two days, it committed suicide, You see tho tail is made up of six joints, and it can move it up and down, The sting, on the last joint, looks like a diminutive awl, and although it strikes down, it can bend it back and sting itself, and that is how it killed itself. The tail was thrown up over its back, as if to strike at some object, but instead the sting was forced into the animal's back, where it remained for several seconds; and when it came out the scorpion was dead, It had evidently found that life was merely a prolongation of suffering, and.so put an end to it, Exactly how much these and other animals suffer we cannot tell, but there is no reason why their agony does not equal that of our own,"

•"Is suicide common among animals?" "It is not uncommon," was the reply. " Here is an animal called the Synapta—a hplothurian that acts very strangely when deprivod of food, gradually committing suicide, It is an unsightly object in the alcoholic bath, but so delicate a creature when alive that Quatrefargcs refers to it as a cylinder of rose-coloured crystal, as much a3 eighteen inches long and moro than an inch in diameter, traversed in all its length by five narrow ribbons of white silk, and its. head Burmounted by a living flower, whose twelve tentacles of purest white fall behind in a graceful curve. In the centre of these tissues, which rival in their delicacy the most refined products of the loom, imagine an intestine of the thiunest gauze, gorged from one end to the other with coarse grains of granite, the nigged points and sharp edges of which are perfectly perceptible to the naked eye, I kept one of these beautiful creatures in an aquarium once where there was neither sand nor food for it, In three weeks I noticed a curious indentation or circle forming round the animal, It grow deeper, and in a day or bo it became detached, evidently amputated by muscular contraction, A week later another ring appeared, and the operation was repeated until finally the animal had thrown off so many pieces that all that remained alive was an oval mass surmounted by the tentacles of the mouth and looked more like a sea anemone than a sea cucumber. It had found that the water did not contain food enough to supply so large a body, so retrenchment became necessary, and the demand was diminished by this spontaneous amputation, which was kept up until the animal had sacrificed its entire body to save its head, which finally also succumbed. The effect of deprivation of food in different animals is often accompanied with results; quite, ias startling as suicide, affecting their vital functions in various ways. If you starve a full grown hydroid medusa, it will change entirely in time, and eventually assume the polyp .form, which is tho larva form of the speojes. Among the higher forms of medusa, want of nourishment tends to retard their increase, decreasing the number of young. Mi', 'f, Gentry, of Philadelphia, has shown that when kept on short rations, the larva of a moth loses its habit of spinning a cocoon,-that it generally does before taking the pupa shape. It affects their size, also, both pupa and moth being much smaller. Among another class of animals certain kinds of food merely affect their colour, As an example, the green : feathers of the Brazilian parrot (Chrysolu Festka) can be changed to yellow or' red by feeding the bird on the fat' of. certain fishes related to our shad, The magnificent Indian, bird, Lori Raqah, preserves its colouring by food. Bullfinches have been made to assume a black hue when fed on hempseed, and tho rich orange-coloured canary that is now' so much in demand is said to owe its colour entirely to the Spanish pepper, the bird being' the common canary. Many butterflies, and .especially those of the genus Euptepia, assume an abnormal colouring when fed. with leaves they are not accustomed to, The eminent English surgeon, Dr. Hunter, starved a sea-gull, and thus forced it to eat grain; and after a year the stomach was examined, and foundnot soft, as it should bo, as adapted to fish diet, but so completely hardened that it looked and felt almost exactly like the horny' gizzard of a pigeon," ' '■,".' " Wasn't that rather a cruel experiment ?" "Nature does the same thing," was the reply, " In the Shetland Islands tho stomach' of the herring-gull, according to Dr. Edmondr stone, changes twice a year.; In the summer it is adapted to grain and in the winter to: a fish diet, In other words, during half of the year, it has the organs of the grain-eater, and n the other half those of a bird of prey,"Many animals will commit suicide to relieve themselves from great pain, Snakes will lacerate themselves from intense heat, I have observed spiders do tho same, biting at their legs and available parts with suicidal intent, Place a ring'of fire around a scorpion, and it will invariably destroy itself rather' than suffer the torture of heat, and I have often seen ants tear their own legs and try to destroy themselves when exposed : to,deadly : heat, Dogs have been noticed from various •causes to make desperate attempts to drown themselves, holding their heads under,water until the desired release was obtained. A case 'Came under my notice of a dog, that was very much attached to its master, refusing all food after the master's death, and actually starving itself to death, being found weeks afterwards lifeless on its master's grave; and yet we say the lower animals are devoid of intelligence, If the truth were known, they have the same affection and feelings, differing only in degree from our own, On questioning an old farmer in the Adirondack country j last summer if he knew of any. caso of animal j suicide, ho referred me to the Bible, citing j tho case of tho swine that rushed down, into i the sea and were drowned, He said that tho swine preferred death to evil spirits, and < so committed suicide. But this interpretation won't be found in the revised edition.' He : iold'ine that soveral of his hogs, in trying to:

swim across a large pond, evidently gavo out in the middle, and before lie could get up to thorn'they had killed tkomsolvos. Their throats were cut, evidently by their forefeet, His idea was that they began to give out and had cut their throats j ,but this .was evidently only accidental. Their increased struggles had caused the wounds, which -too fatal, the cuts being vertical wounds, deep, and five or six inches long, But among the star fishes suicido or attempted self-destruction, seoms to be a favourite method of avoiding enomies and escaping pain, "There is one,' 1 - holding up a round object about fourteen inches in diameter, "that is caught on the reef about sixty miles from - Havana, I was wading along among the coral, dragging my boat, and in lifting up a bunch found.this fellow. It was more than two feet in diamotor, : and, the arms, five in, number at the base, branched off into thousands .of bifurcating points and tendrils:that were entangled about/the coral:like so many snakes. It was the asterophyton, commonly called the basket fish, from,its resemblance to one when the myriads of arms are coiled up. It dropped out of the coral, and as I picked the squirming mass up it commonced a fragmcntal. process, of suicide that was decidedly astonishing. I had to partly divo to it, and as I raised it up a perfect shower of limbs fell off, twisting and coiling down onto my feet, and by the time I had it at the surface its beauty was shorn, as it had thrown off every arm and appeared, as you se.e,-a simplo oval, • Prof, Forbes, of London, had an equally curious expeirenoe with a star suicide the Luidia fragillissima. He says :- "Tho first time I took one of these creatures I succeeded in placing it entire in my boat, JN[ot having seen one before, and being ignorant of its suicidal powers, I spread it out on a rowing bench, the better to admire its form and colours, On attempting to re-move-it for preservation, to my horror and disappointment I found only au assemblage of detached members, The next time I went to the same spot to dredge I determined not to be cheated out of my specimen a second time. I carried with me a bucket of fresh water, for which the star fishes evince a great antipathy. As I hoped, a Luidia soon came up in the dredge—a most gorgeous specimen, ' As the animal does not generally break up until it is raised to tho surfaco of the sea, I carefully and anxiously plunged my bucket to a level with the dredge's mouth, and softly introduced the Luidia into the fresh water. Whether' the water was too cold for it or tho sight of tho bucket too .terrific I do not know, but in a moment it began to dissolve its corporation, and I saw ]its limbs escaping through every mesh in the [net. 1 In my despair I seized the largest jpiece and brought up tho extremity of an ;arm with its terminal eye, the spinous eyelid 'ol which-opened and closed with something [exceedingly like a wink of derision." ;_ In fact, .so determined are these fellows ■in their self-destruction that hardly a cabinet [contains a good specimen of this or the other. ■The only way to obtuin them is to kill them [under water by electricity before they have ja. chance to break up, Many crabs when ■touched throw off their claws and legs, l iproferring that to being captured.. A snail, jcalled the Hellaourion, found in the island of jLuzon, has the faculty of throwing off its jtail when caught by it, And so quickly does lit jump away from the retained portion that jcollectors have difficulty in capturing it In [some cases the snails died after the loss. The jSO-callcd glass-snake might be.mentioned as ia suicide, as they break up at very slight [provocation, i " Here is a case of accidental suicide," .holding up a spear of dry hay. On it, pierced [through and through, was a large green grass'hopper. It had jumped into tho air with a (reckless spring, coming down head first on the [lance-like spear of grass, that had entered jits body where it joins the head, and heldjt [aloft as a warning to the rest.