Over in the “die by running into a wall” thread, there is a side conversation of “Are horses stupid?”
Rather than further that hijack:
I, for one, consider any animal which will eat so much that it dies to be, in a word FRIGGIN’ STUPID!
So: which domesticated critters must be kept from their food lest they die by groging themselves?
Do (some or all) dogs do this, or is there another reason they are only fed in small quantities? (why yes, as a matter of fact, I DO dislike dogs).
As far as dogs go, many people choose to “free feed” their dogs (and cats), in which food is left out at all times and the animal is allowed to eat as much or as little as it wants. This is not going to kill them outright, but both dogs and cats tend to get obese in these situations, although dogs generally will get more so than cats. (cite [pdf]) I am not sure if it is the right term, but dogs are opportunistic eaters by nature and will overeat when food is plentiful in preparation for perceived shortages that would be frequent in the wild. In a house free feeding setting, the dog will tend to overeat in preparation for the famine that never comes. This will result in obesity, certainly, but not immediate death from gorging. Cats may or may not do the same thing, I’m less experienced with them.
But that only happens if the food is grain or pelletized feed – very concentrated food, created for the convenience of the human owner, rather than the horse. It’s easier for the owner to transport and store a few 50-pound sacks of sweet feed, and just toss a couple pounds into their feed box morning & night. But it’s not better for the horse, as any Vet will tell you.
Since the feed is concentrated, horses can eat a lethal amount before their stomach tells them to stop eating. It’s evolved to be large enough to handle much of a bale of hay, but not a bale of concentrated sweet feed! And horses don’t have a very effective “I’m full” signal anyway, since as grazing animals, they are evolved to eat grass almost continuously – up to 16-20 hours per day. Plus they are not able to vomit, which is the way the human body deals with overeating (or eating spoiled foods, or drinking too much spoiled grain (alcohol), or nearly any digestive upset.
Horses in a natural environment, grazing in a pasture, can NOT eat so much that they die.
Well put. I wanted to say pretty much the same thing you had, but probably would not have said it as well. It’s akin to what I said about dogs’ eating habits. In a natural environment, the way dogs eat is actually a survival mechanism. In domestication, however, it doesn’t work. Fat dogs aren’t stupid. Fat dogs’ owners are.
They run to join the herd, and then the whole herd runs away from the danger. A good survival instinct for a prey animal on open prairie. Cattle, Buffalo, wildebeest, etc. do that too. It’s called a stampede.
So the idea of 2 horses alone in a pasture running into each other is not irrational. When panicked, they run toward each other, to join up in a herd. And they could run into each other (especially if they are concentrated on looking around for the danger that panicked them).
In a larger group, there would be an Alpha Mare who would decide where the herd will run, and all the others will follow her direction.
I’m not sure humans aren’t able to do that… the “end cause” would be different, but my great-grandfather’s cause of death is given in the family as “reventó de una comilona” (lit. “he blew himself up eating - on one sitting”). Whether it was a ruptured appendix or a heart attack, I don’t know and don’t ever expect to find out, as 55 years seems a bit distant for a trustworthy autopsy. But if he was anything like his son, he attributed the pain to “gee, I’m still hungry” when it actually came from something else.
The Demon didn’t die, but that’s only because it’s magical, and doesn’t need a digestive respiratory, or circulatory system to survive.
There’s also the Prize in Robert Sheckley’s novel Dimension of Miracles, although it was shrewd enough not to eat enough of itself to cause death.
Are goldfish “domesticated” animals? I know overfeeding is a very serious concern for them. They eat until they literally puff up like a balloon and die.
I thought the problem with farm animals eating themselves to death was caused by the nature of modern animal feed. In “the wild” (whatever that means for a domesticated animal) they would never encounter food they could eat themselves to death with. However modern animal feed is extremly high calorie and nutrient rich so when animals gorge themselves on it, it can kill them.
I think it probably has more to do with the type of animal they are than their intelligence. Carnivores, but their nature, will naturally gorge themselves (as in the wild that is how they eat) and so their bodies can handle it. Grazing animals on the other hand are used to, well, grazing. They are not used to eating huge amounts of high calorie food in one sitting.
Overgrazing is unlikely to lead to death due to stomach rupture. However, overgrazing on rich grass (typically young grass plants in springtime) can lead to death as a consequence of laminitis.
In the Florida Everglades a couple of years ago, a Burmese python gulped down a whole alligator – but fared less well with the digestive process. (Click on Pic 6 for a very nicely detailed pic.)
But, again, this is a result of human modification of natural horse behavior. These horses have been kept inside all winter, then are turned out in spring to graze on young growing grass. It’s the sudden change from eating stored, dried grass (hay) to fresh young green grass that causes the digestive problems, not the feed itself.
And that doesn’t happen in nature. Horses naturally roam in herds, following the grass, going southward in winter. They move continuously, grazing along the way, so in nature they don’t have any sudden change in diet – the grass they graze today is pretty similar to that grazed yesterday, a few miles away.
It’s because we have domesticated them, and kept them confined within pastures on our property rather than roaming to graze, and we make dietary changes that are much more sudden than anything a naturally grazing horse would encounter that we overwhelm their digestive system.
Other kinds of fish, too. We’ve been warned that it’s better to underfeed bettas a bit than overfeed them. Again, though, it could be a function of how active they are in captivity versus their natural habitats.
Most non-pisciverous fish will over eat until death. This includes nearly all fish kept as pets, but it’s not something that’s been widely observed in captive gamefish such as bass or walleye. Goldfish in the wild are bottom feeders and have to constantly attempt to hoover up nutrients off the bottom of their environment so they feed non stop in order not to starve to death. Once again when captive this behavior can be fatal since there’s rarely, if ever, such an abundance of food found in nature.
