Some animals will seek out medicinal plants to treat such ailments as parasitic infestations. Certain plants contain compounds that can induce the abortion of a fetus. So, are there any instances where pregnant animals have been documented eating such plants in order to induce an abortion? I can think of situations, such as severe drought, destruction of habitat, etc., where abortion would be a necessity for survival of the mother.
Sua
Na. They just give birth and then eat their young.
I don’t know if there are cases of female animals aborting their own young. But there are certainly cases of male animals causing females to abort when they are pregnant by another male.
I do not know of any animals that know to seek out a particular plant to abort a pregnancy and would seem a level of knowledge I would expect to be beyond an animal (just seems more knowledge and thought needs to go into it than when they eat grass to throw up for an upset stomach or something).
That said some animals can delay or self abort pregnancies. The armadillo comes to mind. The female can delay the pregnancy (while technically being pregnant she delays the egg implantation somehow…keeping them on hold so to speak) till more favorable times are present. If those favorable times do not come to pass she will abort the pregnancy.
Watership Down, that impeccable scholarly resource ( 
), taught me that female rabbits will reabsorb their fetuses if food is scarce or they are in a high stress environment. Not a plant involved, but it seems a far less complicated and easier way to go about it. Abortifaceant plants mostly work by making you so sick the fetus dies, with the blurry line into making you so sick *you *die. If I could convince my uterus to just disassemble the sprog instead, I’d certainly choose that method.
My tropical fish will eat their own fertilized eggs if conditions aren’t precisely right for a new fry. Does that count?
Life is rough for most kinds of baby fish. The lucky/smart ones can escape and hide, but Mom and Dad will eat a lot of their own young.