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siiky
2023/02/13
2023/02/13
2023/02/13
whitepaper,philosophy,ethics
https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol2/iss20/16/
https://doi.org/10.51291/2377-7478.1304
A short commentary on another study (that I haven't read yet) about animal suicide.
A long highlight:
This does not necessarily mean that nonhuman animals commit suicide often. The rare exceptions may even prove the larger rule. Peña-Guzmán's example of the dolphin Kathy is especially disconcerting. I find his case persuasive that Kathy may well have consciously ended her own life, based on both the ethological and subjective evidence. Dolphins' intelligence is well-known, and Kathy's own depression from "living her entire life in captivity" offers enough context to make suicide seem plausible. Her case may show that at least some nonhuman animals are capable of suicide. But is it common? In this case, it was the highly unnatural, human-created circumstances that would have led her to decide to end her life. The ironies of this situation are grim: A dolphin's captivity is based on the assumption that there is a fundamental difference between humans and other animals (a difference that also justifies holding so many other animals captive in zoos and elsewhere); this in turn leads Kathy to "refute" the putative human/animal difference with an act that looks very much like suicide. Suicidal behaviors are often responses to unbearable social and personal conditions - conditions that intelligent humans have become all too good at creating.
Peña-Guzmán's argument that other animals can and sometimes may commit suicide raises further questions about why anyone commits suicide, and about whether or to what extent we should see suicide - in humans or in other animals - as natural. How often might suicide, whether by humans or by other living organisms, result from excessive human intervention in and management of life itself? To what extent might suicide be anthropogenic?
Found this other article by following some links: Eze Paez, "Humans may be unique and superior - and that is irrelevant":
https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol3/iss23/26/