The most miserable death of an animal: escaping from its natural enemies but being killed by itself?

On Earth, basically every animal has natural enemies. Even animals at the top of the food chain will inevitably fight with other animals, and even fight with their own kind.

Lions fighting each other

However, some animals have reached a dead end in the process of evolution, so that those offensive organs eventually become "weapons" to attack themselves.

Next, let's take a look at the animals that died the most miserable deaths: how did they escape the pursuit of their natural enemies, but were killed by themselves? This result is really sad and funny.

A sheep with its cheeks pierced

Let's look at the growth of this argali's horns. They are growing in the direction of its cheeks and head.

You should know that the horns of the argali will continue to grow after birth, and the ends of these horns are very sharp.

The horns are about to poke your face

Therefore, if a argali has this kind of horns, it basically has to watch itself approach death day by day.

At this point, there is almost no way to save their lives except breaking off their horns, and the process of the sheep's horns poking into their cheeks and heads is very slow. This torture is really cruel.

Basically, only male argali sheep suffer from this kind of suffering. Like many animals, the horns of female argali sheep are very small and sometimes negligible.

However, the horns of male argali are generally very large. Research has found that one of the purposes of these animals having large horns is to resist being hunted by carnivores.

The argali sheep was stabbed to death by itself

However, the horns of the argali are unlikely to achieve this effect because they do not grow upward like deer antlers, but instead curve downward in a spiral.

Although the longest can reach more than 1 meter, this should be the length when straightened.

Why did the horns of the argali develop like this?

Since it is not used for defense, what are the horns of the argali used for?

Here we have to mention what males in the animal world have done in order to win the favor of females.

Argali: I only want beauty

Female argali, like other female animals, is a serious "member of the appearance association". In order to allow their children to have better genes, they will choose male argali with larger and longer horns.

Argali sheep are polygamous, and in order to pass on their genes, male argali sheep will definitely look for more females.

Therefore, in order to better compete with other males, the argali has to constantly work on its horns and body shape.

In fact, not all argali's horns will poke themselves to death. A large part of their horns are bent outwards.

Sheep horns growing outwards

The argali whose horns bend inwards have undergone a genetic mutation. To a certain extent, they took the wrong path in evolution in order to be chosen by females.

Such genes can easily be passed on to offspring, so if this type of argali mates with a female before its horns pierce it to death, this phenomenon will continue.

The babirusa with fangs poking at the forehead

The babirusa, which lives in the tropical rainforests of Indonesia, has a similar experience to the argali.

They look like both wild boars and deer, hence their name.

Babirusa

The babirusa is very recognizable. Look at the two pairs of fangs on its head. Some are intricate and some are pointing directly at the forehead.

After the dissection, it was discovered that the fangs of the babirusa were actually its own canine teeth, which should also play a defensive role, but it is obvious that these canine teeth that poke into its forehead cannot do this.

In addition, the tusks of some animals also play a certain role in obtaining food, just like the tusks of elephants can help them dig soil, peel bark, etc.

Weirdly-shaped canine teeth

They are also unable to do this. Even though they are omnivorous animals and plant fruits and small creatures are on their menu, the fangs above are basically useless when hunting.

The size of the babirusa makes it one of the big brothers in the area where it lives, and it has almost no natural enemies.

Therefore, those babirusa that were killed by their own fangs could be said to have died in a rather miserable way.

Fangs poked into the forehead

Seeing this, you should have guessed that the reason why the tusks of the babirusa are long and thick is also to shine in front of females, so that it can have a greater advantage when competing with males.

However, often only the pair of fangs at the bottom can be used, and their growth can be controlled, basically growing forward, with part of them possibly growing upwards, so that they can use their fangs to poke the opponent during competition.

The tusks of some babirusa may break during fights, which means they may lose the right to mate with females.

Broken fangs

If the fangs that are broken are those that grow towards the forehead, it actually saves their lives to a large extent.

Because the broken fangs will not affect their normal life, but if they are not broken, sooner or later, the fangs will stab themselves to death.

Of course, the growth of this pair of fangs is very random, and not all babirusa will have such "suicidal" fangs, so the number of babirusa that die from this is already considered a minority.

According to scientists' research, the lifespan of babirusa living in the wild is generally around 10 years. Given the growth rate of their tusks, it is unlikely that they would stab themselves to death.

Babirusa

However, the number of babirusa has decreased significantly, and is almost on the verge of extinction, so there must be other reasons leading to their death.

Bull shark killed by itself

In addition to the above two types of animals that have reached an evolutionary dead end in order to mate and reproduce, this shark, which has absolute lethality in nature, can also be eaten to death due to its own greed.

This shark, which can live in both fresh and salt water, is the most dangerous shark in the world, not the great white shark, but the bull shark.

Bull Shark

The reason why the great white shark is mentioned is because there is a movie called "Jaws" which was adapted from a real case, which made the audience feel the horror of the great white shark.

But in fact, in this incident, the great white shark is definitely the "scapegoat", because according to investigations and research, it was found that the bull shark was the culprit of the five injuries in 1916.

With their hot temper, bull sharks are almost fearless in the ocean, which means that few animals will attack them.

The scientific name of the bull shark is Carcharhinus giganteus, because their body is as strong as a bull, their nose is as wide and flat as a bull, and most importantly, their stomach can be called a real "bull stomach".

Bull shark hunting

It’s not that their stomachs are that big, but they really can eat a lot.

The most important thing is that bull sharks don’t go out to eat just because they are hungry. Many times the food in their stomachs is not fully digested.

When food enters the stomach, it is like entering a refrigerator and may not be digested for ten days or half a month.

But they will still keep looking for food, and will eat anything they see, including turtles, small sharks, etc.

These indigestible foods continue to accumulate in the stomach, eventually causing the bull shark to die of starvation.

Bull shark killed by choking

Scientists once discovered the body of a bull shark on the banks of the Brisbane River in Australia.

After the autopsy, it was discovered that the bull shark's stomach contained bull heads, ham, horse meat, and plastic. Both the amount and type of food were incredible.

People don't even know how they get all this food, they just know that there's a high chance they died from overeating.

Bees that died from successful attacks

I have to say that nature is really amazing. In addition to these animals that can "commit suicide", there is another animal that often injures 800 enemies and loses 1,000 of its own, and that is the bee.

bee

As we all know, after a bee stings a person, its stinger will remain in the human body. When these stingers fall off, they often pull out the bees' internal organs. Therefore, many bees that lose their stingers will die after 2-3 hours.

But in nature, only a very small number of poisonous bees are harmful to humans, so many bee stings can be said to be not worth the cost.

Despite this, bees will attack without hesitation when they are threatened because, like ants, they live in groups with a clear hierarchy.

Bee stinger falls off

Therefore, the worker bees responsible for defending their homes will fight against these big guys even if they are prepared to die.

These animals have either evolved to the top of the food chain or have desperately avoided being hunted by their natural enemies, but they still die in their own hands in the end. It's really sad and funny.

Source: Cosmic Decoding