Are there any non-human animals that have been observed killing other animals, not for food, but just to amuse themselves?
Do any non-human animals torture other species for the sole purpose of entertainment?
Thanks.
I don’t know if this counts, but my cat has been seen playing with her prey before she finally does them in. I have seen her batting mice around as if they were a ball.
I don’t think it’s quite in the spirit of your question, though.
My cat.
She tortures the shit out of mice, stomping on them and batting them around before stalking off and leaving them broken and bleeding to die (or for me to put them out of their misery). This is apparently quite common in domesticated cats that aren’t constantly hungry. Domestic dogs are also known to chase and kill sheep and lambs without eating them.
Orca have also been observed playing ‘tennis’ with seals, though this site asserts that:
How do you propose we determine the motive for an animal’s actions? I think you are perhaps ascribing human emotions to a non-human.
An acquaintance of ours has a sheep farm. They have Great Pyrenese to patrol the perimeter and to protect the sheep.
In their experience, coyotes were fine (more or less). They would kill a sheep, haul it away, and eat it.
However pack of wild dogs were another issue. These were dogs that were once domesticated, but were now out on their own. They would kill several sheep and eat not eat any.
It would seem that they were killing for pleasure.
Tinker
I saw a National Geographic special on House Cats and their hunting methods.
It was amazing! Some cats kill, just for the pleasure! They (NG) asked people to collect all of the “bodies” that their cats brought home or left on the ground. One lady collected close to 100 bodies in a 30 day period from her cat. They included, mice, birds, rabbits, etc!
I know I had a siamese cat that wipped out our wild rabbit population on my parents property!
MtM
Cats.
Cats and dogs. I’ve read accounts of wolves killing for fun as well. I suspect that most well fed carnivores and omnivores with access to the right prey would do it just for practice/fun.
This will be embarrassingly vague because I saw it a long time ago on TV (maybe a National Geographic…
In some unremembered locale, there were two monkey (or chimpanzee) populations - call them A and B - that a research team was watching. The researchers left the area for a short time, and upon returning, they found that population A had murdered all, or damn near all, of population B. The scientists were at a loss to explain it - I think. Maybe they came up with an explanation.
If enough Dopers read this, I am certain some will remember this documentaryand will recount the tale much more accurately than I did.
Here in CT, a neighbor’s dog “George” was ´the area bully of other dogs.
One day George came on our property and bit the hell out of my dog. No reason. It was something to do. If I hadn´t intervened George would have killed Rommel, my German short-haired pointer.
(The owner paid the vet bills, and soon after got rid of George.)
This argument has always bothered me. When I follow it to its conclusion, it ends up condemning humans for having free will.
Jane Goodall observed a chimpanzee named Passion and her daughter Pom, who would steal, kill, and sometimes eat other chimpanzee’s offspring. Also, the group of chimpanzees once split into two groups. The males of the larger group systematically hunted and killed all the males of the smaller one. I don’t think they ate the remains.
Sure cats play with their food or sometimes just kill and don’t eat, but that is, arguable part of their instinct. Wild dogs have similar instincts.
Killer whales, without question, kill for fun. I’ve seen film of them playing a sort of ‘football’ with baby seals, flinging them through the air with their tails. This often results in injury or death for the hapless seal, which is left uneaten after then game is over. I think dolphins have been observed doing the same, but I can’t be certain.
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- Killer whales will kill and throw around seals as well as penguins, and then usually not eat them.
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- Killer whales will kill and throw around seals as well as penguins, and then usually not eat them.
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Hell YES. My parents’ chicken coop was wiped out by a single weasel. It didn’t eat anything, it just slit the throats of all the grounded birds (turkeys, ducks, guinea hens, chickens) and left without eating anything. Ask any livestock farmer, they’ll have similar stories.
“Instinct” and “amusement” are ill defined terms that can only confuse the issue. We can’t even fully define our own mental state, much less that of other species.
Having said that. I know many dogs that snap at bugs (I’ve owned some) with no obvious intent other than amusement (i.e they don’t eat the bugs). Oh, you meant “higher animals”? Is there any reason to presume a dog makes a moral distinction between a small mouse and a big bug (or for that matter, moral distinctions at all). “Higher animals” is a fuzzy term for humans, meaning it’s a fuzzy term period. If it skitters across our kitchen floor, many of us will kill it, many cats will kill it, many dogs will kill it. To ascribe moral (or other) weight to that, you have to prove your case.
I’ve long heard that weasels will kill for sport. Admittedly however, this comes from several of those often bizarrely incorrect “10,001 Amazing Facts!” style books.
In Greece there aren’t many weasels around, but lots of foxes. They do exactly the same thing. Farmers hate foxes.
Er, DougC, please read my post.
I would like to alter my position to agree that we shouldn’t ascribe “pleasure”, “entertainment”, or “sport” to something that may be a compulsion (the same way my cat uses solid objects like the wall vainly to try to bury food). She certainly seems very excited when she gets a mouse, but I have no insight into the feline mind to tell whether it she’s experiencing “enjoyment” or “pleasure”; it might just be an adrenaline rush.
If you mean by amusement “for any reason other than food” then heck yeah. My Jack Russell Terrier kills possums, snakes, cats, squirrels, birds and ignores them after they are dead. JRTs are bred for the instinct to chase furry things that move fast along the ground, and to follow them into their lairs, if necessary. I think it is less amusement than a bilogical imperative, though.
Dolphins
(Scroll about a third down the page to the second blurb under 3 June 2002).
I’ll throw in a vote for cats, too. Lately there’ve been all kinds of dead uneaten animals littering the grass in front of my apartment. Anybody know what I can do about this by the way?
::sulks, loves birds