Many animals skinning death to try to get past their predators, with some people in predatory species remaining motionless, if endangered, for long periods of time.
Charles Darwin recorded a beetle that stayed at a standstill for 23 minutes – but Bristol University has recorded individual antlion larvae pretending to have died for a staggering 61 minutes. Equally important, not only is the length of time an individual remains motionless but unexpectedly long. This means that a predator will not be able to predict when a predator will move again, attract attention, and become food.
Predators are hungry and cannot wait indefinitely. Similarly, predators may miss out on opportunities to get on with their lives if they remain undisturbed for too long. Therefore, it is best to think of death skinning as part of a deadly hide game and to seek out where prey could get the most by breaking death if other victims are available. easily.
The study, published today in a scientific journal Biology Letters, including an assessment of the benefits of death by a predator in visiting small numbers of predatory prey. Researchers used computer simulations that use margin value theorem, a classical model in optimization.
The paper’s lead author Professor Nigel R. Franks from Bristol University’s School of Biological Sciences said: “Imagine you are in a garden full of identical soft fruit bushes. You go to the first bush At first you pick and eat fruit quickly and easily, but as you stick the brush finding more fruit becomes harder and harder and takes more time.
“At some point, you should decide to go to another press and start again. You are greedy and want to eat as much fruit as possible. The marginal value theorem will tell you how long spend at each press with that time will also be lost moving to the next press.
“We use this approach to observe a small bird visiting patches of exposed antlion pits and show that antlion larvae, which spend some of the predator’s time, by‘ play dead ‘if dropped, changing the game dramatically. In a sense, they encourage the predator to explore elsewhere. ”
The modeling suggests that antlion larvae would not gain much if kept undisturbed for even longer than they do. This gives the impression that, in this arms race between raiders and looters, the devastation of death has been so long that it cannot be resolved.
Dr Franks said: “So playing dead is kind of like a heavy trick. Magicians distract an audience from seeing their hand spear by encouraging them to look. Elsewhere. Just like with the antlion larvae playing dead – the predator is looking elsewhere. Playing dead dead can be a great way to survive. ”
###
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! they are not responsible for the accuracy of press releases posted to EurekAlert! by sending institutions or for using any information through the EurekAlert system.