Do animals Lie?

answers said:
My lecturer at uni Thomas Suddendorf (he's an expert in evolutionary psychology) told us that it's been found that chimps will make a danger call when there is no danger so that all the rest of the chimps retreat into the trees above, and while they are gone the chimp that made the danger call will just go and eat all their food.

But don't think they are too smart, the chimps in the trees will just stay there and watch as the deceptive chimp takes their stuff.

But that's a clear cut example of intentional lying right there.

But lying as well as a lot of other things are not specifically human traits.

I'm about to start researching for a presentation on how morality is found in chimps. There are actually studies out there that have found a sense of morality in chimps, it's amazing. They'll have a chimp perform a simple task, then reward him, then that chimp will watch as another chimp performs the same task but this time they'll reward him with many more rewards. The chimp that is getting less for the same things gets really annoyed and will no longer do the task because he thinks it's so unfair.

It's pretty cool that chimps have a sense of what is fair and unfair. There are other experiments which have demonstrated morality in animals too.

I wonder what this means for religions who claim that morals are uniquely human and are devinely given to us?
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They did that same experiment with dogs as well, the dogs behaved in the same manner.

Dogs, unlike chimps, know that humans can't see when their eyes are closed. So dogs will do stuff they have been forbidden to do while the person isn't looking. When the person's eyes are open they won't do it. I think that falls into the category of deception. I saw a video of that experiment on youtube it's really amazing that dogs understand the concept so well when other animals don't get it at all.
 
I can certainly believe that some animals can and do lie, but it seems like it would be quite difficult to determine whether or not an animal was deliberately "lying," or just doing something that it knew would get a desired result.

For example, a bird might know "If I flap around in a certain way, predators will come after me and ignore my nest," but that doesn't necessarily mean that they understand that they are tricking the predator into believing something that's false. They might just know that it gets the predator away from the nest, and not have enough intelligence/empathy/whatever to appreciate that they are fooling the other creature.
 
Good Point Nasor. I need to think about that a bit. I'm not sure if it makes a difference or not......
 
Deception in animals has been observed but I guess people could still argue that animals haven't lied, but it all depends on where you draw the line.

I think animals lie, however they are not capable of complex lies. For example lying on their taxes, or making up a story for why they were late for work at the zoo that morning.

However I think almost all traits displayed by humans are seen in a basic form in primates. Even superstitious belief (aka religious belief) is found in animals. Basic imagination is found. Basic language. Basic politics. Basic deception. Basic sense of morality. None are uniquely human.
 
I guess it depends on what you consider a lie. Is deception a lie? If so, I think you will find the natural world full of deceptions. An easy off the top example would be the angler fish where the fish uses a part of its body as a lure to attract prey.
 
Nasor said:
I can certainly believe that some animals can and do lie, but it seems like it would be quite difficult to determine whether or not an animal was deliberately "lying," or just doing something that it knew would get a desired result.

For example, a bird might know "If I flap around in a certain way, predators will come after me and ignore my nest," but that doesn't necessarily mean that they understand that they are tricking the predator into believing something that's false. They might just know that it gets the predator away from the nest, and not have enough intelligence/empathy/whatever to appreciate that they are fooling the other creature.
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:bugeye: so they don't have enough IQ to understand that they're just pretending to be injured? they don't have enough IQ to understand that by pretending to be injured that they're tricking the predator?
 
PsychoTropicPuppy said:
:bugeye: so they don't have enough IQ to understand that they're just pretending to be injured? they don't have enough IQ to understand that by pretending to be injured that they're tricking the predator?
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Correct. They might just know that if they thrash around in a certain way, predators leave their nest alone. They don't necessarily understand that they are thrashing around in a manner similar to how they would move if injured, or that by doing so they will trick the predator into thinking that they are injured.
 
Nasor said:
Correct. They might just know that if they thrash around in a certain way, predators leave their nest alone. They don't necessarily understand that they are thrashing around in a manner similar to how they would move if injured, or that by doing so they will trick the predator into thinking that they are injured.
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Maybe we don't really understand science, but know if we do this certain thing, this particular way we get an internal combustion engine.... :shrug:
 
Nasor, you are right, animals do certain things for an outcome with no knowledge of why it works. For example there was one experiment done where the researcher would give a bird in a cage a bit of food randomly. So after 5 mins the bird would be given food, then after 2 mins, then 10 mins, then ..... etc.... These birds however started to act very strangely, one would peck at the corner of the cage. Another bird would fly constantly from perch to perch. Another would spin in circles. Why did this happen?

Because behaviours are reinforced in life, one bird would get food and they just happened to be spinning at that time. So they tried to spin again later and when they kept spinning for a while they got food again! Then all they did was spin and they kept getting food. Another bird just happened to be pecking at the corner of the cage when it was given food the first time, so it figured that pecking at the corner of the cage gave them food. Etc... Etc...

That's how we all operate. By reinforcement and conditioning. This is also how religious belief operates, when you pray you might have your prayers answered randomly, but people still view this as reinforcement and justification for them to continue praying.

I don't think we can really fault animals for thinking this way, when people do it too.

However there is also a lot of evidence that primates are capable of more complex reasoning, not as complex as humans by any means, but still more complex than a bird or a rat who primarily operates on these sorts of reinforcements.
 
I was just searching youtube and I found some pretty cool videos. I find it really striking how similar chimps and other primates are to humans, they are even tickelish and they laugh and everything:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9wM8cY3yFM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnbKzDkZktQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVNr5NsLFoY&annotation_id=annotation_321&feature=iv

There's another video here of some pretty impressive behaviour by chimps vs humans too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVlJv7ZkvGA

The actual reason behind chimps being better than humans at this task is because they have a better spatial memory than humans. It's pretty cool that chimps have actually evolved certain brain functions better than humans.

And I think this one is pretty awesome too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ttRaXlnfs&feature=related

Chimp playing pac man. Honestly how can people deny that humans and primates share a common ancestor when they are so similar.
 
Kennyc said:
I love to hear more about what you find wrt morality in chimps!
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There are two species of chimpanzees which look almost identical to humans but have quite different social behavior.

The "true" chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, tend to be violent, quarrelsome animals. They are pack-social like their closest relatives, humans and gorillas, but the scheming, deception and physical violence within their clans resemble the palace intrigue in a Shakespeare play. They lie in ambush and kill members of rival packs, and occasionally even their own.

The smaller bonobo chimapanzees, Pan paniscus, on the other hand, are the free-lovin' hippies of the jungle. They love everybody and spend half of their time having sex. Pairs, threesomes, foursomes, gangs, any age, any gender, incest be damned.

Genus Homo split off from genus Pan long before the two kinds of chimpanzees speciated, so they are more closely related to each other than to us. But recent DNA analysis suggests that troglodytes has mutated further away from the single ancestral chimp than paniscus has. So genetically, it looks like we are probably more similar to the sweet, peaceful bonobo than to the larger, more bellicose chimp.

Where did we go wrong? ;)
 
Kennyc said:
Only case(s) I can think of are when a bird fakes an injury to lure a predator away from its nest.

Camouflage I guess, but that's not really intentional, I'm thinking more of intentional lying or dishonesty.
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Yes animals lie, all the time. They are just not very good at it. :p
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
There are two species of chimpanzees which look almost identical to humans but have quite different social behavior.

The "true" chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, tend to be violent, quarrelsome animals. They are pack-social like their closest relatives, humans and gorillas, but the scheming, deception and physical violence within their clans resemble the palace intrigue in a Shakespeare play. They lie in ambush and kill members of rival packs, and occasionally even their own.

The smaller bonobo chimapanzees, Pan paniscus, on the other hand, are the free-lovin' hippies of the jungle. They love everybody and spend half of their time having sex. Pairs, threesomes, foursomes, gangs, any age, any gender, incest be damned.

Genus Homo split off from genus Pan long before the two kinds of chimpanzees speciated, so they are more closely related to each other than to us. But recent DNA analysis suggests that troglodytes has mutated further away from the single ancestral chimp than paniscus has. So genetically, it looks like we are probably more similar to the sweet, peaceful bonobo than to the larger, more bellicose chimp.

Where did we go wrong? ;)
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Yep I kinda like the bonobo lifestyle myself...
 
Nasor said:
For example, a bird might know "If I flap around in a certain way, predators will come after me and ignore my nest," but that doesn't necessarily mean that they understand that they are tricking the predator into believing something that's false. They might just know that it gets the predator away from the nest, and not have enough intelligence/empathy/whatever to appreciate that they are fooling the other creature.
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I agree. I would say the same actually goes for humans.

We tend to think ourselves as the measure of all things, and as if the human interpretation of things is the highest one. But considering how busy psychologists and psychiatrists are, and philosophers, sociologists etc., and how they keep coming to new findings, reviewing theories, and so on - then obviously, if humans would really be at the top, there wouldn't be so much to discover, review and revise.

A person may think they have successfully fooled someone. But how can they know for sure? Did the other person do as expected because they were fooled, or because they, too, employed some strategy?

Just because one person goes along with another person's plan doesn't mean that person is actually obedient or subjected, for example.

I do not think that external behavior and verbalized explanations are in any way sufficient to know the truth about a person's intentions and actions.
 
Doreen said:
Cats lie about being embarrassed. Ever see one run into something or fall off something and then in a very dignified manner pretend to sniff something or lick a paw.

I'm cool, nothing untoward just happened.
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My moggie always does this if she runs into something by accident.
 
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