Talk:Deception in animals

Deception in animals is currently a Biology and medicine good article nominee. Nominated by Chiswick Chap (talk) at 15:10, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

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Short description: Deception by non-human animals

This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

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Establishing the concept

The concept of 'deception' as something non-intentional (natural selection having presumably caused deceptive strategies to evolve independently many times) needs to be established in the article. Currently there are 2 sources which name 'deception' - of which one is an unreliable source (a blog) and the other is a dead link. What is needed therefore is a set of reliable sources which state firmly what 'deception in animals' is and establishes that the concept is accepted and in use.

Since readers will be familiar with intentional deception, it would also be advisable to have a section on 'Intentional deception', pointing out that humans do it and that there is disputed evidence of intention in non-human primates. This would kill two birds with one stone, as it would clarify the non-intentional nature of the rest of the article, and also indicate the relationship to the human form of the activity. There could be a mention of military deception at the same time, from one point of view just an aspect of the human form of deception, and from another an interesting parallel with animal camouflage, mimicry, threat, etc. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:50, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have listed below sources (including articles in leading science journals) which discuss the concept of deception in animals. Deception in animals makes no arguement for or against intentionality as this would make the article subject to selective reporting and highly likely to be arguementative. However, to further indicate the concept of non-intentional deception, I have listed a few references on deception in plants. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet attributed intentionality to plants.

"Deception is the major obstacle to information sharing. And the living world is rife with deception. From the lure that an anglerfish uses to attract prey [5] to the false alarm that a flycatcher raises to dissuade competitors [6], from bluegill sunfish males that sneak matings by masquerading as females [7] to the mimic octopus that can imitate a wide range of poisonous creatures and other underwater objects [8], from the false mating signals of carnivorous fireflies [9] to the sham regenerated claw of a fiddler crab [10], from the chemical mimicry that caterpillars use to invade the nest chambers of ants [11] to the bluffing threats of a molting stomatopod [12], organisms deceive one another in every imaginable way in order to attain every conceivable advantage." Dealing with deception in biology. Carl T. Bergstrom http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/publications/Bergstrom09.pdf

"Deception occurs ubiquitously among organisms (including viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals) and facilitates feeding, mating, threat evasion, and other advantages (Trivers 2011). Intentional (or tactical) deception is more specific, and may be defined as the purposeful presentation of false information in order to manipulate others and gain an advantage (Byrne, Whiten 1992)." Intentional deception. http://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/intentional-deception

Mitchell and Thompson list four levels of deception. •Level one – false markings on animals such as butterflies having markings that indicate their heads are at the back end of their bodies as an aid to escape, camouflage patterns on a wide variety of animals and false markings to make predators appear to be not predators and vice versa. •Level two- false behavior to deceive prey that they are not predators and vice versa. •Level three- feigned injury to get or divert attention. For example a parent bird feigning a broken wind to attract a predator away from its defenceless offspring. •Level four- verbal deception such as a chimp misleading other chimps to hide a food source or a human lying to deceive another. Mitchell and Thompson, Deception, Perspectives on human and non-human. Cited on deceit.http://books.google.com.au/books?id=eHV_8YC_NLC&printsec=frontcover&dq=deception+mitchell&source=bl&ots=76sXSdbCcP&sig=jHRfybdLVHOTBBWAVH4njj-Rk2A&hl=en&ei=fsuFTc2zKZCOvQOj58HUCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false cited on "On Self-Deception" (2010) http://www.divinityseeds.com.au/self_deception.html

"Within a particular patch of woodland, swamp, desert, or ocean, it is common to find dozens or even hundreds of examples of deception that vary widely in form and effectiveness" Lessons from animal and plant deception. Chapter 3, in Unweaving the Web: Deception and Adaptation in Future Urban Operations. http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1495/MR1495.ch3.pdf

Osvath M, Karvonen E. (2012). Spontaneous innovation for future deception in a male chimpanzee. PLoS One. 2012;7(5):e36782.

William A. Searcy and Stephen Nowicki. (2005). The Evolution of Animal Communication: Reliability and Deception in Signaling Systems. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ,

Frans B. M. de Waal (2005). Intentional deception in primates. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 1 (3): 86–92 Article first published online: 2 JUN 2005 | DOI: 10.1002/evan.1360010306

R. Steger and R. L. Caldwell. (1983). Intraspecific deception by bluffing — a defense strategy of stomatopods (Arthropoda, Crustracea). Science, 221:558–560.

"Animals for example may deceive predators or prey by visual, auditory or other means." Wikipedia,Deception

Deception in PLANTS

"Among the various adaptations that plants show, deception of other organisms is arguably one of the most intriguing." Deception in plants: mimicry or perceptual exploitation? http://eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/papaj/Pdfs/Schaefer%20Ruxton%202010%20deception%20in%20plants.pdf

Schiestl, F.P. et al. (2003) The chemistry of sexual deception in an orchid–wasp pollination system. Science 302, 437–438

Johnson, S.D. and Morita, S. (2006) Lying to Pinocchio: floral deception in an orchid pollinated by long-proboscid flies. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 152, 271–278

Peres, C.A. and van Roosmalen, M.G.M. (1996) Avian dispersal of ‘mimetic seeds’ of Ormosia lignivalvis by terrestrial granivores: deception of mutualism? Oikos 75, 249–258

__DrChrissy (talk) 19:40, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's great. It's at once obvious that incorporating this will strengthen the article, in particular the overview at the start (which could still benefit from a comparison with what it is not, i.e. animal vs human and military deception). It's also clear from these well-chosen examples that the hard part of the question is the metaphoric/real issue (military camouflage is intended to deceive the enemy; animal camouflage has evolved as if to deceive predators/prey...). The great ape instances are certainly very close to deception in the plain human sense, so the article's subject straddles or actually crosses the metaphoric to real divide - surely needs some explaining up front. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:19, 2 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Article wrong

Koko was not as capable as stated. See [1] [2]. --Ysangkok (talk) 22:28, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your interest in the article. Unfortunately, it looks as if the web-sites you have cited are simply opinion and I can't even see who they should be attributed to. However, I share concerns about misinterpretation of some of these findings and I will change the wording in the article accordingly.__DrChrissy (talk) 22:41, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Silvering

I doubt the word silvering (under 3.1 Crypsis) is supposed to link to a page about a process in making mirrors, unless it's just there as a pun ("reflect" the environment). I'm not sure where the link should lead, though, for the same reason I clicked the link in the first place. 76.218.109.224 (talk) 02:57, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I looked around WP and I cannot find anything really suitable to link it to, so I have deleted the link.__DrChrissy (talk) 10:46, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Wiki Education assignment: Truth, Ethics, and Deception

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2022 and 29 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Carolineee22 (article contribs).

Rework needed

This article has for many years now lacked sufficient citations.

In addition, it is either disorganised, or has been arranged on a model no longer widely accepted by evolutionary biologists.

Thirdly, there is extensive repetition or overlap with other articles, in particular drilling down into subsidiary articles of Mimicry when covering that one article as a brief section with a 'main' link would be sufficient. Much the same applies to subsidiary articles of Camouflage.

I propose to rework the article to fix some of these issues. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:20, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]