Clever animals - Tactical deception: Movie-ready tricks with mice
It is a common move in action films: The pursued hero hides right at the entrance and escapes the onrushing attacker then behind his back. It is hard to believe, but mice also use this trick, as reported in the specialized journal "Open Science" of the British Royal Society by a research team led by Rafal Stryjek of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
With deliberate deception - this could now be proven for the first time in mice through specific experiments. Videos of the tests show how a mouse is chased into a chamber by another mouse. Cunningly, the mouse hides right at the entrance, is overlooked by the pursuing mouse, and escapes behind its back.
Desperate Situation
The team led by Rafal Stryjek had set up test chambers with a plastic pipe as the only entrance and exit near a forest, and regularly supplied them with a delicacy - chocolate nut cream. In the area live Wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) and Yellow-necked mice (Apodemus flavicollis) - species that fiercely defend their territory, as stated in the study. Correspondingly, there are frequent conflicts.
At the feeding stations, it was no different, according to the researchers. When a Wood mouse was attacked by a competitor of the same or another species, it sometimes resorted to the trick of placing itself right at the entrance upon entering the chamber, luring the pursuer past it, and escaping behind its back.
Sometimes the first mouse was already in the chamber and performed a similar maneuver: arriving mice heard it, hid at the entrance, let the newcomer pass by, and waited for a favorable opportunity to leave the chamber.
Repeated Deceptions
In total, 21 such deceptions by Wood mice were recorded in 143 observed encounters, it was written. The pursued mice thus avoided a fight in the otherwise inescapable chamber - in most deception cases, the pursuer was a larger, stronger Yellow-necked mouse. However, deceptive maneuvers by Yellow-necked mice, according to the study data, seem to be rare.
The exact way the deception unfolded varied from situation to situation and from mouse to mouse among the Wood mice. The team around Stryjek concludes from these and other hints that it is likely not about a completely inherited or learned behavior, but at least partially about a spontaneous, creative reaction to a new challenge.
"Wood mice cannot defeat Yellow-necked mice in strength, so they apparently resort to tactics and deception to outwit their opponents and avoid a physical confrontation," the study states. However, making a definitive fact out of this hypothesis is difficult - intentions are ultimately only to be suspected and hard to prove.
Rats and Squirrels also use deliberate deception [(Note: The text seems to be missing the last sentence of the original German text, which matches the title of the last heading in the English version. I assume it is a repetition of the statement about rats and squirrels using deliberate deception, similar to the mice.)
Another animal intentionally deceiving, is a complex behavior that is based on highly developed cognitive abilities, explain researchers. So far, such tricks have been known mainly from primates and raven birds. However, there are also indications of this behavior in squirrels and rats: Gray squirrels lay empty nut storages, in order to specifically deceive potential food thieves. And rats can play hide-and-seek and even switch roles, noticed by humans.
- This behavioral strategy was also observed and studied by the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, an international collaboration between the Royal Society and the Academy of Sciences.
- Intriguingly, this deceptive tactic is not limited to mice in Poland; similar behavior has been reported in mice populations in other parts of the world, such as the United States and the United Kingdom.
- The Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, where Rafal Stryjek works, is planning to collaborate with the Royal Society and other international research institutions to conduct a multinational study on deceptive behaviors in various animal species, including mice, rats, and squirrels.
- The results of this research could potentially provide valuable insights into the evolutionary origins of deceptive behaviors in animals, shedding light on the role of cognition in shaping animal social dynamics and survival strategies.
- As interest in these deceptive behaviors grows, the Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and the Royal Society are aiming to establish a Global Deception in Animals Research Network to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and promote the sharing of research findings across countries and research communities.
