[Right Wing Professor]

How does an animal lie?

Let me count the ways.

Well there's Batesian and Mullerian mimicry

And there's brood parasitism

And there are those femme fatale fireflies

In fact, nature lies almost as much as your average creationist.

[furball4paws]

But, but, but They are just stupid animals. They don't know any better.

[furball4paws]

This bit has caused me some thought, and it hurts. But the real bad guys of the animal world don't lie so much. It's the wimps. A coral snake doesn't lie he lets you know he'll bite and it will be bad - the kingsnake is a wimp and is along for the ride. A rattlesnake isn't lying, but he lets you know he's dangerous. A pack of hunting lionesses don't lie, they just catch the zebra and eat him.

Since people of certain persuasions lie, they must be wimps too.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Frans de Waal has done a great deal of work showing that chimps are particularly skilled at deception. See "Intentional deception in primates", Evolutionary Anthropology, 1-3, 1992, and his 1982 book, Chimpanzee Politics.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

I hear what you're saying, but I don't think that really constitutes a lie. I was thinking more of conscious prevarication.