Thanatosis: Playing Dead to Survive

the Julie household. Well, you know, you're just you're sitting there, you're talking to your spouse, and all of a sudden you just get the blank look. You slump over in your chair and you try to scare them. And you need to know that. One of the films that made the biggest impressions on me in my youth was Harold and Maud, in which the main character Harold played by Bud Court. Yes, he likes to stage the suicide tableaus. So my brother and I growing up, would would sort

of do this around the household. Well that's I think that's a that's a good activity for kids. Nice, nice, morbid, A way to stend a rainy day. Afternoon. Well, yeah, especially if you're trying, if you're doing the whole like corpse being dragged away in a doorway so that all you can see is that legs, and you can kind of do this on your own. By the way, there's

some tricks here. It's it's great fun for mom and dad. Well, you know, I didn't see Harold in Montill I was older, but I do remember watching a lot of Sherlock Holmes mysteries when I was really young, and they're you know, they're wonderful. Jeremy Brett was the Sherlock Holmes. I mean, Benedict cumber Box is great, but but Jeremy Brett was wonderful. So every episode, of course, would have some sort of murder of varying grizzliness. For the most part, one or

two wouldn't have a murder. But but I never really got into acting amount, but perhaps I should have. Well, you know, there's there is a great value in playing

parts them. And I wanted to point out that this episode actually comes out the forty second anniversary of Harold and Maud, So talking about fanatosis today, this death mimicry that ties in pretty nicely with that yeah, So it begs the question, as humans, are there times when we should play dead, when we should just you know, lay there on the floor in a crumpled heap or in a nice, you know, stiff uh riga mortis type of position and just hope that whatever is after us will say, oh,

well they're dead, better move on. Yeah. Sometimes actually, but sometimes not so much. Now, there are a couple of prime examples, uh situations that most of us don't encounter, where there's a there the myth is out there that you should play dead and that's the way you'll survive.

The first of which we're going to discuss is the shark. Now, the shark is of course terrifying, whether you're dealing with a you know, a fairly unrealistic idea that a great white it's gonna get to at the beach, or you're dealing with a more realistic idea that some sort of smaller shark is gonna come after your your toes in the surf. Regardless, it's something to be fearful of. We

don't want to be eaten. And so there's this idea out there, Hey, if you see a shark coming after you, just go limp in the water, play dead, and then they'll pass on. True or not true? Not true? Yes? And the reason here is, of course, ask yourself, why would the shark pass you by? Why would the sharks say, oh, well, they're dead. I don't want to eat something that's dead. Have you met these guys? Have you met these sharks?

If you watch Shark Week, you know that they're not going to turn their backs on on a potential meal just because it stopped moving. Yeah. Well, and Louis c. K has this great bit about how humans don't realize like what an upgrade in our existence it is to be out of the food chain, and he goes into the shark's perspective and says, hey, we don't have a lot of energy to spend here. We already have to swim around all the time. We need to go for

the easy stuff. And that's why a lot of times they'll uh separate an infant from its mother in the water because that's an easy target. Not much energy expended to go after that. So if you're in the water and let's say shark is circling you, this is bad news, right. This is not the time to just sort of pretend like you're dead. This is the time to be like, wow, big energy, I'm a big problem. You are not gonna want to spend like of your energy reserve on me today, buddy. Yeah,

And think of the shark as a Hollywood producer. People are always saying, oh, why don't they go after some sort of an original idea that really takes us somewhere we haven't been before. Why don't they go for these remakes and this and the remake of a remake and another adaptation of this proven concept. That's because it's a proven concept, it's a it's an easy catch, and the

economics of it are driving the decision. Same with the shark. Yeah, I can eat that that that person that's playing dead there with with little or no added effort, or I can get into some sort of struggle with this thing. Well. And the thing about the shark text is that most of them are hit and runs. And when I say hit and running, men more like hit and take a chunk out of you. And then they realize, oh, this is not a seal, or this is not something that

I would normally eat, and normally they would retreat. But there there are those times when a shark would attack you, and that behavior is very obvious, as I said, the circling behavior. So put up a big fight, do not play possum. Yeah. Now, another area where we encounter this this notion that you should play dead is with bear encounters, and the bear is kind of the shark of the land, and that it is a creature that definitely outweighs us, outpowers us, and it can and does eat us from

time to time. And you were you were talking to the other day, you were in the woods, and what were you thinking about. I was thinking, I don't want First of all, I'm glad that my daughter isn't with me right now while I'm taking this walk through the North Georgia Mountains and this trail, because you know, she would be the easy pray right and instinctually a bear or some other animal would know that. But then I

started to think, oh, I can't remember. Do you know if a bear comes after me, do I act crazy and ridiculous and do I blow in a whistle that I don't have, or do I completely retreat and get quiet, punch in the nose, hunch in the nose, because you know I could do that. Um. But it turns out it depends on the type of bear. Yeah, and uh yeah.

There are a lot of factors here. One of the big ones, of course, is does the bear have a natural fear of humans or has the bear been eating out of garbage cans that are that that park rangers

have brought out. When I visited the Yosemite National Park um a couple of years back, then they went into the history of the park and there was a time when they would they would everyone would gather around and they would have dumps like garbage cans full of scraps from the from the from the from the kitchens, and they would beat on the cans and the bears would come out and they'd feed them. And they had a sign that said, do not fear, do not feed the

bears by hand, by hand, by hand. But you know, I love that they put the by hand. Yeah, but but if that happens, so you know, you hear this time and time again. You feed the bears, and the bears don't have a fear of humans, and then you just have closer proximity to this creature that may eat you. Pick anyway, and generally bears really don't want anything to

do with you. But the Yellowstone National Park saw human bear conflict spike in two thousand and eight and two thousand and ten, and followed in two thousand eleven by its first fatal bear attack in twenty five years. So you see this violence linked to a bunch of factors habitat loss, human intrusion, food shortages, and climate change. That's a couple of examples. But generally, as we say, they don't want anything to do with you. But I always go back to Cheryl Strait, who wrote the book Wild.

I don't know if you are familiar with this account of her. I think three month track through this Pacific Crest trail, which was crazy terrain, and she actually carried a very loud whistle for the purpose of bears because you know, she knew that that was a real possibility depending on the time of year she was in certain areas, about whether or not they would go after the food that she had or even herself. Yeah, the food is

that is one of the big things, of course. So do you have food on you that's attracting the attention of the bear, And if you then encounter a bear while say carrying around a whole basket of sandwiches, you probably want to drop that basket of sandwich. Is better to let the bear have the sandwiches than than fight it away from you. Yeah. Now, if you encounter a brown bear, and this is according to Mother Nature Network, stand tall, stay calm, and slowly reach for your bear spray.

You're going to have bear spray, right, I needed by some they say don't worry if the bear stands up, that usually just means that it's curious. And you would want to back away slowly if you could, with your spray at the ready, and if the bear follows you stop and stand your grunt. And now all of this

sounds sort of terrifying to me. Just get in that one little and it's easy to say these things, but I'm trying to imagine myself in the woods and a bear either standing up or following me, and I think there would be a very good chance that I would just completely lose it, destroying, just make a break for it and run or be unable to run well. And

I did read. I think it was the Yellowstone attack. Um, I might have the park wrong, but there were three people that were under bear attack and one of them was killed and the one that was killed was the one that went crazy and started screaming. One actually was gored a bit, but she played possum and she was fine. But that's basically what they're saying here. With a brown bear, if it charges you, you you know, fall down and you lace your fingers over the back of your neck, right

because you want to protect that. Usually what they go for guard your stomach by lying flat on the ground or assuming a fetal position with nice tech on ger chin and don't move play possum. Because the thing is is, uh, they want to They're not really interested if you're looking like you're dead, and they don't want to play with you necessarily. But the thing is you have to play dead for at least twenty minutes because they will hang around and make sure that you're just as boring as

you look. I know, twenty minutes, yeah, I mean just twenty minutes with a bear. It's hanging out, just gonna see if you stir and uh and then eat you perhaps if if you do, yes, yeah, and I mean anything I want to say. This really is the best tactic. But of course, if if that does not work, then you know, a big slam to the nose, to the eyes if they were, if you could even manage, that would be the last resort. Yeah, I mean, at that point,

if it's you might as well go down with the fight. Right, You're gonna eat me, but I'm gonna make your nose a little sore for a few minutes. All right, So what else you got? What are the bears? All right? Black bears? Same principle. You know, you see a black bear, do not run away, but do stand tall. And in this case though, you're gonna want to create a big commotion. So if you have sticks, if you have a whistle.

And again, this is why Cheryl straight Um when she was on the Pacific Cross Trail had her whistle, is because she wanted to just scare anything away and really let other animals know that she was around so she didn't accidentally come upon them and frighten them. Yeah. Like, that's always the thing I'm concerned about when I'm I'm

walking around in the mountain here in Georgia. It's it's not that a bear will hunt me down, but I'll just suddenly round a corner and there'll be a bear and then we just kind of look at each other and the bear will be like you know, just shrug and say, well, I guess we got to do this, and then I get eaten. So yeah, I mean, if if it is a black bear, then you know you're gonna want to try to make as much commission as possible.

And then the other thing is if it does attack you, the best thing to do is to actually try to fend off the black bear. Again according to Mother Nature Network, not according to Julie Douglas. If this happens and it fails, you miserably. Um. So, you know, the idea again is that with the black bear, that it's going to respond more to you actually fighting back. And perhaps it's more of the idea of, hey, this thing, this person is kind of a pain in the butt. Maybe I won't

tangle with it all right. Of course, another big area of humans playing possum humans pretending to be dead, of course, is when humans are dealing with other humans. You see this more for the most part, you see it as a trope that shows up in TV shows, movies, etcetera. Somebody's in a generally in a war situation, and they're on the battlefield and they play dead and then they're passed over by the enemy troops. I mean, I ad meant say it's a troupe, but it also obviously it happens.

It has happened, Uh, you know many many times in real battles as well, due to varying number of causes. You know, you could be intentionally saying, all right, there's no way i'm gonna find them out of this, I'm gonna hunker down. You might be partially incapacitated due to an injury, but you end up to varying degrees pretending to be out of the battle when you really are not. Yeah.

I was just thinking about the mall shooting in Nairobi and one of the people who survived actually employed the possum method, which was, you know, she covered herself and and I believe blood and and uh actually kind of snuck in underneath someone else and pretended to be dead. Oh, it's horrific to think about. But this is I mean, certainly this is not the first instance, as you have

pointed out that this has happened in human history. Yeah, of course, one of my favorite examples of this as it shows up in fiction in a way that doesn't actually horrify us in a in a non entertaining manners of course, silence of the Lambs. Do you remember the the possum I'm thinking when it would a certain Dr Hannibal lecter um mald An individual. Yes, and then he took their skin off. Ye. And in the film especially fantastically um utilized and you just really had you on

edge the whole time. There's an elevator involved. Well, I mean there's the element of deception, right, And that's the thing, it's the deception. And that is why it's interesting to note that in UH, in actual warfare and under various UH national, international UM laws of war, playing dead, especially if you're playing dead with the intention and to then

kill somebody, is against international laws, against Geneva convention. I have a bit here just to put it in the perspective from the JAG book on the Law of Land War, and it is from section that deals with treachery and assassination. UH again to put it in context. That's the area where they discussed playing Possum says it is the essence of treachery that the offender assumes a false character by which he deceives his enemy and thereby is able to affect a hostile act which had he come under his

true colors, he could not have done. It is treachery for a soldier to throw up his hands in surrender and then take up his rifle and shoot his captor. A soldier who pretends to be disabled or dead is

guilty of treachery if he then uses his rifle. And the idea here too, is that if you get into a situation where enemy combatants are faking their death and then and then rising up and and and and attacking again, then it degrades the morals of the of the of the warfare scenario to the point where you just in of having possum squads going around just like shooting everybody in the head, uh and instead of you know, dealing with the with the potentially injured uh combatants. It's interesting

too that there are these laws of morality and killing. Yeah, you know, you look at it this way, and it does seem like there is some sort of um attempt to structure it to make it less awful, but at the same time, it's still killing. And so it's just the interesting dichotomy. Yeah, we could probably go a whole episode just on this weird idea of the laws of war and how and what if into what extended has

h been utilized sometimes? You know, because for instance, uh, the absence not the complete absence, but the largely the absence of chemical weapons during the Second World War very interesting anomaly following the horrific use in the First World War. And then of course we see these standardized rules of of uniform combatants. We see we see these ideals breaking down as we we enter into a stranger high tech but also gerrilla existence of warfare in the modern age. Yeah.

I was just thinking about when we talked to Dr Alan Arkin over at Georgia Tech, and he was talking about how do you teach machines morality If they're going to be making these autonomous decisions about who would kill and who not to kill. It's very dicey territory even as a human. Can you imagine trying to instill this

in a machine. Yeah, I mean, because it would make more sense to instill it in a machine if it was fighting, say, you know, the Revolutionary War or some sort of you know, very structured, old fashioned land war. But it makes increasingly complex as we advanced, and we've seen this with drones to drone strikes and anyway we were way off path, he aren't we Yeah, because we're

in this episode, we're talking about playing dead. We're talking about a little something that is often referred to under two terms, and we're gonna discuss these terms a bit. Tonic immobility and fanatosis. Yes, and they are confused quite a bit in terms of how you define them and when to use them. Uh tonic immobility. In my head, I tried to fix this as more a reflex in animals. So um one definition would be in natural state of paralysis that animals enter in most cases when presented with

a threat. Yes, something's trying to eat me. Ha ha ha, I can't move, whereas fanatosis would be more like, there's a creature in my midst's gonna try and eat me. I'm gonna be real still, I'm gonna lock things down, and then after he's not making any more noise, I'm going to move off. Very deliberate, right and adaptive to So I guess that's how you could tell the distinction

between the two. I did want to mention that fanatosis in Greek mythology is the personification of death, and the Greek poet Hesiod established that thanatosis is a son of Nick's night in Arabos darkness and the twin of hypnos sleep,

hence the beautiful term. What is interesting you mentioned hypnos because this scenario, this fanatosis tonic immobility, has been known by a number of different terms, including including death, seeing immobility, reflex contact, defense, immobility, writing time, catatonia, playing possum, playing dead, and animal hypnosis, which just now, I'm just thinking about a possum with like a watch in front of it. You're going back and forth. Do not let them. I

do not trust a possum to hypnotize me. That's no good. So we see this in a huge variety of animals. You see an insects, decapod, spiders, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, various mammals, um And that's why why the terminology can get a bit confusing. We've discussed enough about just the human scenario. What do we choose to do in our lives?

What do we deliberately do from our lives? And what extent is it instinct kicking in when you start making a judgment call on whether this animal is deciding to do something or it's a reflex there can be a certain amount of gray area, especially if you're talking about simpler organisms. Yeah, and this is interesting. Artificial select and experience have shown that there is a heritable variation for

a length of death feigning and beetles. So again that tells us that that might be adaptive and those selected for longer death feigning durations are at a selective advantage to those at a short for shorter durations when a predator is introduced, So again the idea that it's adaptive

among that species. Now you mentioned the beetles that it's interesting that the theory is that a number of insects to do this, they lock up, they go stiff, because a lot of the animals that they're the predators that are dealing with, would be there to eat them whole without any chewing. And if and if you're if you straighten yourself out and you just go completely into a star shape legs akimbo, then than that that swallower may

not be able to get you down. Huh. I was just thinking about my cousin who's in the military, and one of the things that he had to do is he was dropped in the middle of nowhere and he had to eat or a live rabbit, because that was the only thing that he could not a live rabbit. I should say that it was just one of the few sources of protein that he could find out there

in the wild. And what he had to do is he actually had to pet it and before he killed it and split its throat, because otherwise, if it had had any sort of fear, it would have frozen up, and then he couldn't have It would have made the meat youing very hard to do. So it just made me think about that and the beetle and freezing up and saying, hey, I'm not all that great to eat. Yeah, how are you gonna get me down? I'm just all stiff and awful. Yeah, too bad that rabbit couldn't have

exercise a little fanatosis. But of course, with most vertebrates, um fanatosis is generally best explained under the hypothesis that it has to do with losing the predator's interest saying, hey, I'm just this dead, awful thing. You don't want to eat me. I smell horrible. You want fresh meat, You want to fresh kill. You don't want something that's been just been here in a puddle of its own rotting awfulness for you know, however, how long has passed well?

And I think the i iconic example here is the opossum, in particular the Virginia opossum Didelphis Virginia. And this is according to Natalie Angier, writing from New York Times. She says that when faced with a predator, it falls to its side with its mouth a gape, and excretes droppings in a foul or odor and remains in a deathlike state of curled catatonia for minutes to hours until it finally revives, beginning with a twitch of the years. And

that's that's great, right for an opossum. Yeah, just completely. This puts on the ruse of death pooping itself, emitting foul odors. And it already looks pretty foul. I mean, all fairness to the to the bossom, but it's a it's a pretty foul looking creature to begin with. The problem is when it mistakes a car, let's say, an oncoming car for a predator and employs the fanatosis and then becomes roadkill. Yeah, now that that's unfortunate, but of

course that's really on us, not really on them. Road screw up the whole scenario for wildlife. Now, it is worth noting with the with the possum, uh that even though it appears to be in a canatonic state, it's metabolic processes are as high as when the animal is fully alert. So in this we see the possum as another example this kind of gray area between the idea of tonic about immobility is a completely non voluntary reflex and then the idea of fanatosis as a conscious ruse. Uh.

It's still an open question, okay. And that's the interesting thing about tonic immobility and sharks, because there is this idea that it is involuntary and that they're taking basically there um their vitals down to the studs. Yeah, the shark thing is really interesting, especially when you're looking at great white sharks, which we already talked about earlier. This is a this is an apex predator. This is a

big deal. So why in the world what a creature like this um roll over and play dead when attacked by an orca? Well here's the Okay, we'll get to the But there is this idea that t I is a defense mechanism that just is reflexive because they see it more sense sensitive levels of it in female Great whites, and female Great whites might do this to avoid mating. UM. The interesting thing about it is that you can induce it by touching certain areas of the great whites body,

specifically the nose area. And it's thought that UM, it's this animal's sense of motor interchange with the environment that causes a limp response in the animal displays relaxation in muscle tone and deep rhythmic respiration. Again, taking those vittals down to the studs, and sharks can enter into t I into less than a minute, and if left alone in tonic immobility, they can remain in that state for

up to fifteen minutes before eventually righting themselves. So animal trainers will sometimes use this and they'll place their hands lightly on the side of animal snout or it's eyes. That's because there's something called ampuli of loren Zini and these are special jelly filled sensory organs and they're extremely sensitive and this enables a short to detect even the faintest of changes in the electrical fields. And so there's this idea that the animal is saying something very weird.

Is going on in my electromagnetic field. Let's turn off the lights. So the idea here is that tonic and mobility may present itself in sharks as a way to help with the mating well or avoid the mating, or avoid a predator. Although as you say, it's odd because they are apex. Yeah, well, why would they have that in their in their DNA unless it's you know, hold over from from the past. Right. And the really interesting thing about this is that the orca, the killer whill,

is hip to this. Yeah, it's a highly intelligent animal. Yeah, it says, oh really, so you guys do that every once in a while, you know. The ideas that they have observed this behavior in great white Yeah, they say, oh, there's a there's more or less a button on your face and if I push it, you go limp. Don't

mind if I do. And uh, And there have been uh we've seen this several times and the waters of the fair Lone Islands, the female oracle was observed to hold a white shark upside down for fifteen minutes, uh, effectively causing it to suffocate. And there's actually a whole documentary titled The Whale that eight Jaws that that dives into this uh this, this topic of shark knic and mobility in a deeper way. Yeah. The idea is that it basically goes in really hard and slams into that shark,

into the great white and then stums it. And then once they do that, then they can go and they can hit that mark on their face and flip it over and essentially suffocate it. And they've actually seen the Oorcas do this in pods with sting rays as well, and you can see video of this is very intentional with the sting rays where they take them, they actually go in upside down so that they can slip the

stingray and render it immobile. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, more santatosis, more tonic and mobility and ducks, and we're back. Is that really the plot line for that book? Yeah, that's right off of audible. Okay, so look for that plot line in the next season to True Blood. Yeah, I know exactly what I'm gonna look up right after the podcast here, alright, let's talk about n got eight tracks.

We've got all sorts of great uh BG songs playing in the background, and we have a bunch of researchers with about fifty ducks and some foxes. Yeah, this is study published under the title death Feeding by Ducks in response to Predation by red foxes um as in not as in the comedian, but is in actual red foxes. Uh. And this appeared in American Midland Naturalists. So yeah, they took about fifth year so ducks and they let the fox have at them. Now, if you're familiar with foxes

at all, you know that they keep to themselves. They're they're they're they're rarely seeing. Really, they're they're sly creatures. And if one gets into a chicken coop, what happens, Well, they go after them. Well, and they kill all the chickens. That's the thing that like the idea of the foxes. The fox is not going to go in and say, oh, I will have a chicken today and maybe i'll be back for chicken tomorrow. No, the fox is gonna say, well, I'm just gonna take all these chickens and I can

hide some away for later. So that's pretty much what happens when the when the foxes get at the ducks, Uh, they just start they start going after him. And what did the ducks do in retaliation? Well, they play possum. And what's interesting about this, besides the fact that the researchers just tossed these fifty ducks into the cages of

these red foxes, again, it's nineteen five at this point. Um, what's interesting about this in that in sixty of those trials, the foxes quit their attacks when the ducks look to be immobile or dead. Yeah, and apparently it was the especially with the inexperienced foxes. They were like, whoa, what happened? This duck was alive and thriving, and then that came after and then went dead. Am I still supposed to

eat it? I don't know. The experienced foxes, those are the ones who who were not fooled by this at all. They're like, all right, go ahead, play dad, makes it easier for me. Well, and that's the interesting thing about that attack with the great white is that when you look at the documentary for it, what they say is that that great white was inexperience. It should not have been hanging around a pod of white orcas um. And so that's why it's rare. You don't see that happening

very often, you know, Orca going after great white. But experience of as always plays into whether or not, you know, organism is going to survive. Now, the death faints and these ducks lasted anyone from twenty seconds to fourteen minutes, with the recovery delayed by tactile visual or sound cues from the foxes. So as the fox still touching me? Do I hear it? Do it? Can I maybe see the fox? Um? And twenty nine of the fifty ducks

survived the initial capture and handling. Uh. You know, then you know, maybe mouth you're killed or store and stored away later. But the idea here is that tonic and mobility fantatosis in this in this case with the ducks, allowed them at least the potential of escaping later. And uh, and you know, ultimately that's that's what matters. So you're about to be eaten by a fox? What are you gonna What are you gonna do? What makes more sense? What from an evolutionary standpoint like a which is the

higher percentage of rate of possible survival? De Yeah, obviously you're probably gonna get some things in your neck unless you use deception right. Yeah, So in this we see highly adapted behavior makes a possible the duck to potentially escape that foxy death. But the foxes have rolled with the punches. They're smart to this, their hip to it. So in many cases they're learning to kill some of

the ducks after capture. And they're also adapting appendage severing behavior so that they can at least hobble their their meals once they take them way. All right, So next we should talk about the nursery web spider. And we have talked about sexual cannibalism in spiders, particularly when they are mating, because we find that sometimes when the female

is mating with a male, particularly with the orb spiders. Right, Uh, not only will they say okay, hey we're mating, but the female might just chomp off your head and say I was hungry. By the way, so thanks for bringing yourself over here. So, if you are a male spider approaching potential mate, and this is from Map of Life Convergent Evolution online, it says, uh, the mood of that potential mate may swear from uh amatory to predatory, and

sexual cannibalism is a constant risk. If you are a male spider, so what do you do, Well, it helps bring a gift. It's true. Yes, the male nursery web spiders will bring a silk wrapped gift to their potential mates. And they're basically two kinds of gifts, well, aren't there always? They're good gifts and they're bad gifts. And in the spider economy of things, that means there are edible gifts

and they are inedible gifts. A good edible gift we might be, you know, insect parts, the head of a tasty insect, a little gut action wrapped up in that, in that the little cocoon. But then a bad gift and inedible gift might be seeds which the spiders have no interest in or at worst of all, this is particularly hilarious, an empty exoskeleton of an insect that the

male spider himself consumed. That's that's It's like bringing an empty box of Valentine's chocolates to your beloved and saying, here you go, oh, by the way, I ate all the chocolates in the box. So what happens when she unwraps that and finds that her nice little protein source is not there, that it was a ruse? Well, you have to have something in your back pocket here. Yeah, and you know, guys, we've all been there. This is

you know, you know how it goes you. You present, you know, a potential girlfriend with a gift you didn't have time to stop off at the store. Yeah, so it's not a great gift. They don't like it. So what do you do? You fake your own death and you try again tomorrow after you're out again with a different gift, maybe even a better one. Because that's essentially

what the spider does if the Spider present. Because because if you don't have a gift in the in the nursery Web Spider world, you can still made, but your chances of making a significantly less if you if you don't have the gift, and then if you have the gift, your chances are significantly higher. A prolonged mating is that is a tasty, edible gift. So if things are going south with your gift exchange of it doesn't look like

it's gonna work. You do you faint? You say oh I'm dad, You pull a hornburger, fake your own death and maybe you'll get to do it tomorrow. Nice thirty rock reference. So the thing is too, is that if you fake it, if you're fainting there, you're still copulating. Okay, you're just looking like you're copulating, slumping over, I suppose, um. And so what this does is it increases the length of compulation. It might also save your life. So at the end of the day, though, it is an adaptive

male mating strategy as well. Yeah, I mean you could imagine a similar thing working with humans where the female says we're done, and the male says, oh, I'm sorry, I just died, or you know, just snoring. Dr Sarah the Octave she wrote a great little article called Playing Possum, and she talks about the hog no snake in this instance, and she says that it rolls onto its back and appears to be dead when threatened by predator. And this is great. A foul smelling volatile fluid oozes from its body.

I wish I could do this um. Predators like cats would then lose interest because it smells dead and it looks dead, right, And one of the reasons why it would lose interest, why when you start poking around, is that that rotten smell might be you know, as we've talked about this in nature, big, hey, watch out, there could be an infectious disease going on here. Usually that's what we know sort of discussed that we feel is

an innate response against infection or disease. So that's why it works so well in the Hog No Snake because when we talk about vultures in that episode, we did a whole episode on on buzzards and vultures a while back. We really got into how souped up that organism has to be to handle a lifestyle of eating dead animals because they basically have to be disease proof to a certain extent. So obviously animals that have adapted their entire existence to eating fresh kills are not going to go

that rope exactly. So if the cat can't throw up on it and have a high pH you know, of acidity in its stomach, then it's probably not going to consume that snake, right, all right? So who else does it? Well? Interestingly enough, young fire ant workers under attack from neighboring ant colonies. Uh. This this is really interesting because it's not the whole colony playing dead, but just the the young, the young ones, the young members of the of the colony.

So the thing is they can't really contribute much to the defense of the colony because their mandibles and stingers are not sufficiently hardened to penetrate the external skeletons of the aggressors, so they're far more valuable. The argument is in the clean up and rebuilding phase after the attack. So when the when the enemy troops roll in, they just lay dead and they're not getting up and using

it as a ruse to then attack. But they're The idea is that they can't really contribute to the defense anyway. Their best use is rebuilding afterwards, which is brilliant. Yeah. But we have another example. Oh yes, and this one's really cool because it's a particular fish, the sleeper chichwood, also known as the Livington stoney um. It's named after Dr David Livingston, the famous explorer. Dr Livingston I presenting, uh you'll find uh find these guys freshwater Africa. Widespread

in Lake Malai, Upper Shire River and Lake Malombie. They live in soft muddy bottoms and their solitary. They have this really modeled kind of corpse light color and they have they've they've been observed to do to pull this uh, this ruse where they mimic a dead fish, you know, on their side toward the bottom, and then when small fish move in to get a bite to scavenge, then they wake up and eat themselves, some all scavenger fish.

So they're they're completely ignoring the Geneva Convention law. Right, Yeah, these guys are definitely just throwing any kind of moral military law to the wind. But but it's interesting because it stands out as a as a really interesting example of an animal playing dead, uh for predatory purposes and

not defensive purposes. And you know, again, I will go back to Louis c. K's bit about this whole thing about humans being you know, the apex species and not and getting out of the food chain and not having to worry about this stuff. And and he's saying, and

I believe the show is called Oh my God. He says, you know, we really take it for granted that sometimes we get to die in bed with our loved ones around us, while all the other species, for the most part, you know, they've got a pair of fangs in their neck and they're there. You know, that's how they meet their end. So you know, you you think about something like playing possum or tonic and mobilit or fanatists. Yeah,

of course they would do that. But no, yes, of course you would do that if you were in the food chain. Yeah. I mean, I can imagine having this conversation with my cat, who is now an indoor cat ever since she ran away a few years back and she's too old to live out there on her own. But we'll have this conversation where she says, I would like to go outside now, and I say, you can't go outside. If you go outside, you're going to die. You're gonna get run over, one of the young feral

cats is gonna kill you. A dog is gonna get you. And her answer would be, well, that's how it goes. That's how you die. That's what dying is about. Eventually something eats you or crushes you, uh in some way, shape or form. This idea of dying quietly and peacefully on your own terms, uh, in the house, that's more of a human thing. Yeah, And she's like, if the coyote gets me gets me, Yeah, that's part of the thrill.

So there you have it. Playing Bed for Survival an introduction, we ran through some interesting examples, and I do want to point out that I was inspired to pursue this topic after meeting a possum with my son at Aware Wildlife Center in the Atlanta area. If you want to look them up, go to Aware one dot org. They're a federally recognized tax exempt nonprofit organization of volunteers working to preserve and restore wildlife and its habitat through education

and wildhigh life rehabilitation. So people find like an owl that's been injured, they bring it in. They find other wild animals that have that that have been injured or abandoned, they bring them in and UH and then if possible, they re release them and you and they depend on donations from supporters. UH. Just to give you an example of how where the money goes, Like ninety three dollars that'll rehabilitate a fox, hundred thirteen dollars will get a hawk,

forty dollars a possum. They're a little cheaper eighty six dollars for an owl, twenty dollars for a rabbit, six dollars for a songbird, fifty one dollars for a squirrel. UH And the the average costs thou to real rehabilitate an animal is seventy five dollars. So anyway, a where one dot org and they're a really good organization in the Atlanta area, So especially for our Atlanta area listeners. If you care about wildlife and those possums wandering out

on the road, check them out. Indeed, and possum comes a calling at your backdooring that you left some garbage out. Don't answer that call. Do not answer to call it the possum. Hey. And if you want to check out more of our stuff, go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's where all the podcast episodes are, all the blog posts, all the videos. You can also find us on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, Google Plus, on YouTube or mind stuff Show. And then what about

the good old email? Oh yeah, you can send it to you below the mind at discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.