Why did thousands of penguins commit suicide in the Antarctic in June 1990?
Suicide is the choosing of an act of deliberate self-destruction. As regards birds/animals, the problem lies in the words choosing’ and deliberate’ with their connotations of free will and rational but abstract thinking. No animal is capable of such thought processes; indeed, I very much doubt whether any animal has any concept of personal death at all. So, lots of penguins may have died in June 1990…I don’t know…but they most certainly did not ‘commit suicide’.
