Many of Earth's creatures lie... from microorganisms to homo sapiens.
In his new book The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars, biologist Dr Lixing Sun explores why.
Yellow and Green Coated Lizard Photo: Pixabay
Biologist and author Dr Lixing Sun Photo: Supplied/ Central Washington University
We have plenty of evidence that lying and cheating are natural instincts, Lixing tells Jesse Mulligan.
From thousands of different orchid species, about 400 of them pretend to be wasps.
"The flowers look like wasps, smell like wasps and they attract the wasps for mating, and when a wasp male tries to mate with a flower then the wasp is pollinating - transmitting the pollen - to another flower. So these species live by fooling their pollinators."
Lixing points out that flowers don't have neurones so they don't think to do this. The adaptation to displaying new characteristics did not occur through intention but through evolution playing out.
When flower petals with a particular physical appearance attracted more pollinators than others from the same species, this extra attention from pollinators led to this type creating more offspring, which, in turn, passed on genetic codes for that beneficial physical appearance.
Over generations, that process can magnify the physical expression of those characteristics, with the flower's appearance becoming more and more like the wasp because that feature was proving to be more successful.
Some species of orchid imitate wasps, attracting the insect to brush against their pollen and then carry it to fertilise others of their species when the wasp lands on them in turn. Photo: 123RF
Another curious discovery was two chemical pheromones found in a specific mice species do not appear to have been present in earlier generations.
Strangely, these pheromones were known to exist in ferrets - this population of mice's main enemy.
"We were puzzled for quite some time... how could they get these pheromones, what could they do? And one day we had a beer, and ... we came up with the idea they had got to be the chemicals the female mice use to repel unwanted males. In the rodent world, there's not a very strong way to say 'not tonight, honey'. They have to do something really really powerful.
"So we tested that idea, and we found that whenever we add these two chemicals in the smell, the male mice would be scared."
Scientists were at first stumped about why pheromones characteristic of ferrets were found in some female mice Photo: 123RF
Some birds have adapted to 'cry wolf' and imitate the call of a predator, which allows them to gain better opportunities for food or mating while the other birds have been scared away.
The godfather of evolutionary theory Charles Darwin wrote about another deception - mimicry, where a species behaves or makes itself appear like another species to get an advantage, such as dissuading a predator from eating them because they appear similar to something poisonous.
Photo: supplied
At a cellular level, cancer cells can operate as 'cheaters' within our bodies, Lixing says.
In the human body, normal cells live out a limited lifespan, while cancer cells "cheat" the process, Lixing says.
"[Normal cells] divide for a few rounds and then they die, they must die when their job is done.
"However cancer cells don't do that ... they refuse to die. They keep dividing, keep going."
Growths made up of many cancer cells compete with the body's healthy cells and spread, creating more and more disruption within the body.
One example of cancer cells' unusual longevity is HeLa cells - human cells controversially removed from the tumour of a 51-year-old American woman Henrietta Lacks and the first cells to be cloned.
"]Henrietta Lack] died of cervical cancer, however her cancer cells are still alive and contributing to our understanding about cancer."
In essence, medical research into cancer treatment focuses on how to combat cancer cells' ability to 'cheat' and prevail long past the life of normal cells, Lixing says.
Human deception and how to combat it
Photo: 123rf.com
When it comes to lying and deception, humans show some unique traits, Lixing says.
"For the money, for getting a mate. In terms of formats, forms... humans use a lot more diverse ways of [deception]."
Yet we also have a lot more constraints.
"We have social institutions, we have governments, we have companies, we have laws and rules, humans can cheat these things, so that is quite different from animals. But we use two ways of controlling cheating - one is by moral teaching, the other is law enforcement.
"These are the ways we control cheating, to keep cheating at bay. That is also the reason we humans actually civilised, we could build coalitions, we could promote honesty and we cooperate, we prevail.
"No other primate species has done that ... they cannot control cheating so that all these social interactions will be a zero-sum game ... there's no possibility for them to do better because the cooperation has no upside."
In human society, Lixing sees an interesting loophole that some cheaters seem to exploit - the promises made by politicians campaigning for election that could be lies and are also non-binding. Once elected, politicians are then free to act in a way that benefit themselves at the expense of their promises and voters.
Humans also display the unique behaviour of 'pro-social' cheating for the benefit of another person or group, with no personal gain to the cheater.
The actions of German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who put his own life in danger to rescue Jews from the Nazis during WWII, are an example, Lixing says.
"Only humans have that kind of totally altruistic cheating."
