What is the essence of animal collective sacrifice?

It is ridiculous to see some information that whales in the ocean and lemmings in the Arctic will commit suicide, and some people even call the animal behavior that will die after laying eggs "suicide". Here, I write a short article to discuss with you.

First of all, we must define the concept of suicide. Suicide refers to the process of self-destruction that is known to be fatal through others or oneself on the premise of being conscious. This definition has four key points: first, it must be conscious behavior; Second, this kind of behavior is not necessarily carried out by the suicides themselves, such as euthanasia; Third, know that there is enough lethality; ; Fourth, suicide should include its brewing, the implementation of suicide behavior and the aftermath after suicide.

It can be seen that people who want to commit suicide should have self-awareness and a certain understanding of the nature of life. Knowing that suicide will lead to irreversible results, it is also very important to have a personal understanding of the value of life on the basis of understanding the meaning of life. For suicides, the value of life is often underestimated.

So suicide can only happen to intelligent creatures with certain self-awareness and value judgment. Although scientific research has proved that dolphins, elephants and apes have certain self-awareness and show anthropomorphic sadness and shock at the death of the same kind, there is no clear evidence to show whether they deeply understand the meaning of life.

Let's give a concrete example.

There are reports of toothed whales "committing suicide" all over the world, but after careful analysis, they are all desperate because of various unintentional reasons, such as predation, geomagnetic interference, parasites affecting the brain or excessive rescue of their companions. There is no evidence that whales feel "tired of living" and commit suicide.

Let's look at lemmings. These little brown mice did die collectively, but that was the result of misjudgment. Lemmings are locusts in mammals. They will eat up all the habitats, and then start a large-scale migration to find new feeding places. They climbed the boulder pile, bypassed the tree and crossed anything in front of them. If they encounter water, they will try to swim across it, which is often seen by streams and ponds on weekdays. If they happen to hit a lake or ocean, it will be too late to find that they can't swim, and the steady progress of their companions will not allow them to stop, just like the crowd trampling in a crowded place.

And those unlucky husbands-spiders and mantis. The males of these small animals are much smaller than the females, and their special mating posture exposes their bodies to the mouths of the big females, who are often used as food. Is this a rational suicidal behavior of men? Obviously not. I have observed the daily ecology of these small animals countless times and found that males are careful to avoid appearing directly opposite their spouses before mating. Most of them slip away quickly after mating and will not be treated as snacks. Only when mating makes them slow to respond, or their posture is quite unfavorable, for example, a limb just reaches the female's mouth, it will lead to tragedy, and some insects will instinctively chew everything that reaches their mouth, that is to say, being eaten is purely accidental. If you break off any worm's own leg and put it in its mouth, it will still chew with relish. Even if the hair and grass stalks that are obviously not their regular food are put into the mantis's mouth, they will still eat!

Some social animals are separated from the group (captive animals lose their owners), or after their spouses die (more precisely, suddenly disappear), some animals will have obvious anxiety and depression. If this state is not alleviated for a long time, human endocrine will be disordered, and the blood acid and adrenaline produced will be toxic to the body, which will lead to death in severe cases. On the surface, some animals are similar to suicidal tendencies caused by major setbacks. But how many emotional factors are doubtful: this is caused by the break of the fixed lifestyle and the inadaptability of the body. The death of a companion brings insecurity to these animals, but for animals with strong survival instinct, insecurity makes them feel threatened at any time. It has been expounded in animal behavior for a long time, and it is called "stress response". Many animals are difficult to feed without their original environment, such as the familiar sparrow. Some people say that they are angry. More precisely, they have endocrine disorders due to nervousness and fear. They died of the disorder caused by this disorder: rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, loss of appetite and other exhaustion that consumed a lot of physical strength but could not be supplemented-precisely because their survival instinct was too strong, which was the opposite of their seemingly "suicidal behavior".

I have come into contact with many kinds of animals, and their understanding of death is varied. The chickens to be slaughtered in the cage will numbly peck at the rice in the belly of their companions who have just been slaughtered and disemboweled; The miserable cry that a meat dog will make when he sees his companion killed; What shocked me most was that the mother monkey would hold on to the unfortunate child until the young monkey's body rotted due to extreme decay ... but no animal has explored life phenomena so deeply as human beings, so suicide should only be a patent of human beings. Everything comes from thinking too much sometimes, but our thinking is not always reasonable.

If there is any animal other than human beings who will voluntarily choose to give up their lives, then it should be our strong competitor in the future, because only when rationality rises to a certain height will they think crazily, and the creatures who can think crazily are not simple. Animals never think much: the mother monkey holding the baby monkey's body will grab food with her other hand. It's just confused: why doesn't the child move? Female monkeys with children will be taken care of in the group, and the body in their hands is its trump card, that's all.

I don't know whether I should be grateful as a person.