Can Animals Commit Suicide?

Animals are incapable of committing suicide. Evolutionarily, they are two steps away from that.

First is the ability for self-observation. The ability to become aware that you are experiencing something. Feeling pain is different from being aware that you are experiencing pain. Animals are incapable of the latter. Only human is.

Second is the ability to alter how you respond to an external stimulus. The will to change the experience.

To commit suicide, you have to know that you are suffering and will that you end the suffering. First is the notion of aham or self as distinct from impulse-response mapping logic called the buddhi. Second is the manas that can intervene between the impulse and response1, and pick another response2. The praana is the executor of the response but doesn't determine it. The mapping logic is hardwired in an animal, sort of like an ASIC or FPGA.

According to Sri Aurobindo, animals are directly driven by an infallible super-intelligence but aren't aware of it. Humans have an awakened self-aware intelligence called buddhi, that is still groping in the dark. That's why humans bungle up so much whereas animals don't.