A mystery to be solved...

Habitants of Lauterbrunnen, a little town in the Swiss alps, have a little mystery to solve: in a period of 3 days, 28 cows 'committed suicide' by jumping from the top of a rocky mountain. As a matter of common health and to avoid contamination of underground water since there are not so many predators in that area, helicopters were used to remove the corpses (even I am covered for this kind of problem with my very expensive and disorganized health insurance).

The corpses found in the bottom of a rocky cliff.

What is the reason of the deaths? Local police and wise people have different theories:

1. they might have got afraid/startled/frightened of something and ran. Like a storm, but cows living in this area are used to it....

2. maybe they were following one another searching for more grass and...

3. maybe they became aware of the next McDonald's sandwich and tried to make a complaining against it.

4. maybe the new cow in the group belonged to that religion that believes in group suicide.


Fun apart, it is difficult to believe that those animals actually committed suicide. Think with me, to commit suicide you have a reason and you have to know that you will stop your life, for this you have to be aware you have a life.

You might mention and what about more evolved animals, like mammals, which are capable of bonding with their owners and even capable of dying after the owner dies due to stop eating. But do they know they are going to die?

There are even cases of dolphins or some rodents that 'kill themselves' in cases of extreme stress. I don't think they want to kill themselves, I think they want to try to scape.

There is the case of lemmings. When their population is reaches an extreme number the mass migration carried out by these animals may lead to accidental deaths but have nothing to do with suicide. The theory is that some go looking for a new place to live and actually drown of exhaustion. The myth of suicide came from a Disney cartoon!

Natural selection favours individuals that leave as many high-quality offspring as possible. A creature that kills itself before it reproduces leaves no descendants, so the genes for this behavior die out with the carrier.

option 5. Maybe this is a case for Mulder and Scully and could become a good screenplay for an episode....