Do Animals "Commit Suicide''? 



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amounting almost to an assertion, of conscious 

 suicide. If it were no more than a bit of pa- 

 thetic fancy it would be worth notice only as 

 evidence of a popular notion, but it is woven 

 into what is declared to be a true story of the 

 conduct of life by an actual fox, and thus takes 

 its place as an assertion of history. 



But do animals ever kill one another, except 

 by accident, in anger or as prey? And, do 

 animals ever commit suicide? 



What is suicide? Literally, and taking the 

 word merely as it stands, nothing more than 

 self -killing ; but the customary and now only 

 proper definition involves the idea of intentional, 

 voluntary self-destruction, and this implies on 

 the part of the being so acting an understanding 

 of the circumstances of life and death, at least 

 of the difference between them. 



The literature of dog-stories if one may use 

 the expression abounds in anecdotes of pets, 

 or of canine servants of the hunter and shep- 

 herd, which have grieved themselves into a 

 speedy decline and death by exhaustion due to 

 refusal of food, on the graves of their dead 



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