Dr. Ted Stankowich

They will learn to give the alarm calls of other species in their area.

and give false alarm calls so the animals, like a meerkat, might drop the bug it was foraging on, and the other animal, the bird, might fly in and grab it and take it.

That's so mean.

Public information is a very well-studied aspect of behavior, and it's super common for animals to, of course, use calls and signs and visual information from other species.

It's absolutely a defense.

It's called thanatosis.

It's very hard to study because you just have to opportunistically see it in an animal, right?

But it's really the last option.

And normally it's not the first option.

You're running away, you're trying to get away, but it happens when the predator grabs you and you're in the jaws already.

So what other thing, rather than trying to squirm or claw, if you just play dead, maybe they'll stop and drop you and look around and, okay, this thing, I've killed it.

I can make sure there's no other predators around that might steal this.

And you can see videos online of predators dropping a possum on the ground and start to walk around and look for things that might take it.

And the possum pops up and runs away.

It's not a super common thing that it's successful, but at that point,

What else do you have?

So death feigning is a thing we see.

Fear screams, where screaming bloody murder to hopefully call in other members of your species that might mob the predator to help you out.

So you'd be surprised at what animals might do as a last gasp to save themselves, because what else do you have to lose?

So chemical for sure, but what we know about the chemicals are in fish.