A new study led by scientists at the University of Bristol has revealed What do animals do after faking their death? to avoid being killed by a predator and what is the context of this behavior.
Many animals, as a last resort of defense, They remain motionless after being attacked by a predator.
This behavior is so common that it is recognized in phrases such as “play possum” and it is even said that occurs in humans in extreme circumstances.
In previous studies, conducted by the same team using antlion larvae, Scientists observed that they became immobile after being manipulated individually.
At one point it was necessary to weigh the larvae, lor that with such small insects it can be very difficultsince if they move around on the scale, determining their mass can be a challenge.
However, when the antlion larvae were dropped, very gently, onto a scale, They remained completely stationary for more than enough time for their weight to be accurately recorded.
An antlion larva, used in research, playing dead. Unpredictable
Emeritus Professor Nigel Franks from the School of Biological Sciences from the University of Bristol, who led the study, said in a statement: “We chose to investigate this behavior called ‘death simulation’ and we found that the amount of time individual antlions remain stationary It is completely unpredictable for any individual.
“This is confirmed by observing the duration of immobility after contact in a large number of antlions. These data show an exponential distribution. Thus, as with radioactive atoms, the moment when an individual changes state is unpredictablebut the population pattern is perfectly predictable.”
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The study shows that the behavior of antlions hiding in plain sight in this way is likely adaptive, as a predator that has picked up and released an antlion larva would not be able to know how long to wait for its potential victim to move again and become recognizable prey again.
In fact, One of the recorded antlions remained completely motionless for over an hour.
Although You can’t predict when a motionless antlion will come back to life.this does not necessarily mean that the predator has left the scene to look for alternative prey.
The team’s next question was What do animals do after playing dead?In the new study, they show that what antlions do depends on the situation they find themselves in.
Antlion larvae They are burrowing animals that can seek safety by diving into the friable substrate. where they normally build their burrows. But it is quite possible that a predator will drop an antlion onto a hard substrate that will not allow it to escape.
Using sophisticated automated video tracking of the intermittent locomotion of individual antlions on different substrates, the researchers discovered what an antlion does after finishing its period of immobility depends on the escape strategies available.
Professor Franks added: “Our study may well be the first to determine what animals do after pretending to be dead, and we show that what they do depends on the context. It’s a dilemma.”
A Virginia wildcat (Didelphis virginiana) remains dead. Therefore, he added, “Our work opens the field of the study of life after death in the enormous variety of animals that show death simulation, thanatosis or what we prefer to call post-contact immobility.”
