#Elaborate ruse free

The scientists noticed that sometimes the other animals 'get wise' to the con and ignore repeated false alarm calls.

'Because drongos give reliable predator information some of the time, it maintains host responsiveness since they can never know if the drongo is lying or telling the truth,' added Amanda Ridley, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia, another of the researchers. It's a bit of an information superhighway where all the animals speak each other's language,' Flower said. 'All the animals in the Kalahari eavesdrop on each other's alarm calls, which provide invaluable information about potential predators.

#Elaborate ruse free

Then the drongos swoop down for a free lunch. They give their own genuine alarm call when they spot a predator approaching - essentially behaving as sentries - and other animals come to trust that this call signals real danger.Р”В«ut they sometimes give this alarm call when no danger exists to fool other animals into fleeing and abandoning their food. The drongos are able to mimic the sounds made by many different species that inhabit its desert environment, including birds such as pied babblers, glossy starlings, sociable weavers and pale chanting goshawks as well as mammals like meerkats. These birds, common in southern Africa, usually get meals the honest way, such as capturing insects in mid-air using their superb aerial skills.Р”В«ut at other times, like on cold mornings when few insects are flitting around, the drongos turn to a life of crime. 'They're also highly aggressive and are renowned for attacking eagles and hawks, for which they apparently have no fear,' added Flower, whose study appears in the journal Science. 'They're rather demonic little black birds with red eyes, a hooked beak and a forked tail,' said evolutionary biologist Tom Flower of the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The researchers tracked 64 forked-tailed drongos over a span of nearly 850 hours in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa close to the Botswana border to unravel this unique behavior. Scientists described on Thursday how this medium-sized bird brazenly deceives other animals by mimicking alarm calls made by numerous bird species - and even meerkats - to warn of an approaching predator in a ruse to frighten them off and steal food they leave behind. This tricky African bird is the pathological liar of the animal kingdom. If you believe honesty is the best policy, you would have a hard time convincing the forked-tailed drongo.